Gender Equity,Religion, and Fertility in Europe and North America

Religion has historically been a pronatalist force, but because it fosters traditional gender role attitudes, its importance for fertility may wane where gender equity is thought to be emerging as the new natalism. In this study, I used World Values Survey and European Values Survey data from 1989 to 2018 to determine whether more religious Northern countries are slower to develop the widespread egalitarian gender role attitudes associated with fertility recovery. I concluded that the “old natalism” and the “new natalism” do not compete with each other as much as their negative association implies that they might. By tracing the evolution of country‐level gender equity in more‐ and less religious countries of Europe and North America, I showed how country‐level religiosity does not dampen the potential for a gender equity‐stimulated fertility recovery. This paper also contributes by showing that the curvilinear relationship between gender equity and fertility has continued into more recent time periods than covered by previous work.     

Second Births and the Second Shift: A Research Note on Gender Equity and Fertility

In a set of propositions on fertility transition, Peter McDonald recently proposed that the decline from replacement‐level fertility to low fertility is associated with a combination of high levels of gender equity in individual‐oriented institutions, such as education and market employment, and low levels of gender equity in the family and family‐oriented institutions. Similarly, the “second shift,” or the share of domestic work performed by formally employed women, forms a critical piece of current cross‐national explanations for low fertility. Building on this scholarship, the authors explore whether there is empirical evidence at the individual level for a relationship between gender equity at home, as indicated by the division of housework among working couples with one child, and the transition to a second birth. Results, based on a sample of US couples, indicate a U‐shaped relationship between gender equity and fertility. Both the most modern and the most traditional housework arrangements are positively associated with fertility. This empirical test elaborates the family‐fertility relationship and underscores the need to incorporate family context, including gender equity, into explanations for fertility change.     

Gender Equity in Theories of Fertility Transition

Recent theoretical discussion has postulated that low fertility in advanced countries is attributable to low levels of gender equity. Low gender equity is evidenced in the lack of support for women to combine paid employment and childrearing; tax‐transfer systems that remain based on the male‐breadwinner model of the family; and the retention of gender‐oriented roles within the family. Hence, it is argued that an increase in gender equity is a precondition of a rise in fertility from very low levels. At the same time, theorists argue that, in less developed countries, higher levels of gender equity are a necessary condition for achieving lower fertility. The article addresses this apparent contradiction by distinguishing two types of gender equity: gender equity in individual‐oriented institutions and gender equity in family‐oriented institutions. The argument is made that the transition from very high fertility to replacement‐level fertility has been associated with a gradual increase in gender equity primarily within the family itself. In contrast, the further movement to very low fertility is associated with a rapid shift toward high levels of gender equity in individual institutions such as education and market employment, in combination with persistent low levels of gender equity within the family and in family‐oriented institutions.     

New Cohort Fertility Forecasts for the Developed World: Rises,Falls, and Reversals

With period fertility having risen in many low‐fertility countries, an important emerging question is whether cohort fertility trends are also reversing. We produce new estimates of cohort fertility for 37 developed countries using a new, simple method that avoids the underestimation typical of previous approaches. Consistent with the idea that timing changes were largely responsible for the last decades' low period fertility, we find that family size has remained considerably higher than the period rates of 1.5 in many “low‐fertility” countries, averaging about 1.8 children. Our forecasts suggest that the long‐term decline in cohort fertility is flattening or reversing in many world regions previously characterized by low fertility. We document the marked increase of cohort fertility in the English‐speaking world and in Scandinavia; signs of an upward reversal in many low‐fertility countries, including Japan and Germany; and continued declines in countries such as Taiwan and Portugal. We include in our forecasts estimates of statistical uncertainty and the possible effects of the recent economic recession.     

Gender equity, social institutions and the future of fertility

Sustained very low levels of fertility in advanced countries can be explained by incoherence between the levels of gender equity applying in different social institutions. In countries with very low levels of fertility, high levels of gender equity are postulated in institutions that deal with people as individuals, while low levels of gender equity apply in institutions that deal with people as members of families.     

What state,what markets,for what development?

The collapse of “real socialism” and “peripheric late capitalism” and the exhaustion of the various models of “Welfare capitalism” demand the theoretical and practical reconstruction of the entire field of the eco-socio-economy of development and planning. Among the criteria for a new approach would be social equity and environmental prudence. This project should be then translated into a strategy for development which implies in turn a re-definition of state, market and the role of civil society and the forms of interaction between social actors. At the same time, the ways of articulation between the various areas - local, national, global — of development should be defined. In this framework, planning should be seen as a set of procedures for promoting societal debate on the “project”, in order to elaborate long-term strategies and identify the range of the decisions to be taken.     

Why Is Fertility Lower in Wealthier Countries? The Role of Relaxed Fertility‐Selection

Lower fertility in wealthier countries can be explained in evolutionary terms by three key factors: (i) higher fertility in poorer countries—an evolutionary consequence of many generations of intense “fertility‐selection” favoring innate behaviors promoting high fertility, especially in males; (ii) the empowerment of women in wealthier countries that serves to reduce fertility directly—an evolutionary consequence of selection favoring an inherent preference for lower fertility in females, combined with release from the evolutionary effects of a long history of male control over female fertility; and (iii) offspring access in wealthy countries to public health care, welfare, and other social services, which combined with inherited wealth for offspring, virtually eliminates competition between families for the resource needs of offspring. The combined consequences of (ii) and (iii) mean that the fertility‐selection so prevalent in poor countries is relaxed in wealthy countries, thus allowing random genetic drift to produce an increased relative frequency of innate behaviors promoting low fertility and discontentment with high fertility.     

Re‐theorizing Family Demographics

Two dominant theories within family research foresee a long‐term decline in marriage, fertility, and partner stability. They also assume that this “less‐family” scenario will be spearheaded by higher‐educated strata. Trends in the latter half of the twentieth century seemed to provide ample support for both predictions. However, recent signs of change in family behavior raise doubts about their continued validity. In a number of countries we see a halt to, and even reversal of, fertility decline and of couple instability. In parallel, we observe a reversal of the social gradient on both dimensions. Applying a multiple equilibrium framework, we propose a theoretical framework that helps explain both the phase of marital and fertility decline and the subsequent recovery. We focus especially on the endogenous dynamics of the process, which, we argue, depend on the conditions that favor rapid diffusion. Our core argument is that the turnaround is driven by the diffusion of gender‐egalitarian norms.     

An Italian Statement on International Migration

Increasing realization of the implications of persisting below‐replacement fertility in Europe—shrinking absolute numbers combined with a rising proportion of the elderly—is giving new salience to policy considerations regarding immigration in the countries most affected by low fertility. The recent United Nations report on “replacement migration” (see the Documents section in the June 2000 PDR) highlighted the issue through illustrative calculations showing the size of immigrant streams that would be needed for achieving specified demographic targets in selected lowfertility countries, given continuation of present fertility and mortality trends. For example, the UN report suggested that in Italy—which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world—maintaining a constant population over time would require a net influx of some 12.6 million immigrants during the next 50 years, and maintaining a constant labor forceage population (ages 15–64) would require a net inflow of 18.6 million. Yet immigration policy in Western Europe has become increasingly restrictive during the last quartercentury, and the official policy stance that regulating immigration is strictly within the domain of a country's sovereign right has been assiduously maintained. (International treaty obligations qualify that right in the case of bona fide asylum seekers; however, the definition of that category is also subject to the discretion of the receiving countries.) Thus, although within the European Union national borders are open to EU citizens, the power of regulating immigration from outside the EU is retained by the individual countries rather than subject to EU‐wide decisions. Suggestions coming from the developing countries to follow up the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development with an intergovernmental conference on international migration and development were set aside by the potential immigrant‐receiving countries as overly contentious. A statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, Lamberto Dini, delivered at the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations, 13 September 2000, may be a sign of a notable shift in official approaches to immigration policy by at least one EU member state. The statement, in a departure from the practice of touching lightly upon a wide range of issues in international affairs, typical in high‐level ministerial speeches given at that UN forum, is devoted essentially to a single topic: international migration. It characterizes migration “between or within continents” as an international problem and advocates “coordinated and integrated” instruments in seeking a solution. It suggests that “today, with a declining birth rate and an aging population, Europe needs a strategy that embraces the complex process of integrating people from different regions of the world.” The rules for international migration, the statement claims, should be set in a global framework, such as provided by the United Nations. In the “age of globalization,”“a solidarity pact is needed to find the best and most effective way of balancing the supply and demand of labor.” With the omission of opening and closing ceremonial passages and a brief comment on the problem of debt relief, the statement is reproduced below.     

Trade and fertility in the developing world: the impact of trade and trade structure

In the literature on trade and development, fertility and trade have been widely discussed as two separate economic forces. However, an important recent contribution connects these two and suggests that international trade between developed and developing countries has an asymmetric effect on the demand for human capital. The asymmetry leads to a decline in fertility rates in developed countries and an increase in these rates in developing countries. We provide additional comprehensive empirical evidence in support of this novel hypothesis. Our findings suggest that countries that export skill-intensive manufacturing goods experience a decline in fertility rates, whereas in countries that export primary, low-skill-intensive goods, fertility rates are affected positively. Further, our findings indicate that the negative influence of manufacturing exports on fertility holds primarily and most strongly for middle-income countries where structural modernization and a growing manufacturing-intensive export sector is observed.     

Why do English-speaking countries have relatively high fertility?

In broad terms, the division in Europe between countries with very low fertility and countries with sustainable fertility matches Esping-Anderson’s classification of the same countries into ‘conservative’ and ‘social democratic’ (Esping-Anderson 1990). A central difference between these two types relates to their preferred models of the family. The conservative countries hold more to the ‘breadwinner’ model of the family while the social democratic countries seek higher levels of gender equity within the family and in the workplace. State support in both conservative and social democratic countries is designed to be consistent with these differing views of the family. Would we then not expect fertility to be very low in Esping-Anderson’s third group of countries, the ‘liberal’ countries, essentially English-speaking countries? By the Esping-Anderson definition, liberal countries are notable for their lack of support for families from public sources. Instead, according to Esping-Anderson, families must rely upon market provision for the services that they may need to combine work and family and they must rely on market employment to generate the income required to support their children. Contrary to this theory, whether measured by contemporary cross-sectional fertility or completed cohort fertility, with the exception of Canada, English-speaking countries now have the highest fertility rates among the countries that were classified by Esping-Anderson. Given the strength of theoretical explanation that arises from comparative studies of fertility in Europe, the paper examines why fertility in English-speaking countries seems not to follow expectation.     

Relative cohort size: source of a unifying theory of global fertility transition

Using United Nations estimates of age structure and vital rates for 184 countries at five‐year intervals from 1950 through 1995, this article demonstrates how changes in relative cohort size appear to have affected patterns of fertility across countries since 1950—not just in developed countries, but perhaps even more importantly in developing countries as they pass through the demographic transition. The increase in relative cohort size (defined as the proportion of males aged 15–24 relative to males aged 25–59), which occurs as a result of declining mortality rates among infants, children, and young adults during the demographic transition, appears to act as the mechanism that determines when the fertility portion of the transition begins. As hypothesized by Richard Easterlin, the increasing proportion of young adults generates a downward pressure on young men's relative wages (or on the size of landhold‐ings passed on from parent to child), which in turn causes young adults to accept a tradeoff between family size and material wellbeing, setting in motion a “cascade” or “snowball” effect in which total fertility rates tumble as social norms regarding acceptable family sizes begin to change.     

The UN Population Division on Replacement Migration

The most salient demographic trend pictured by the influential set of population projections prepared by the Population Division of the United Nations (a unit in the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs) is the continuing substantial increase—albeit at a declining rate—of the global population during the coming decades. According to the “medium” variant of the most recent (1998) revision of these projections, between 2000 and 2050 the expected net addition to the size of the world population will be some 2.85 billion, a figure larger than that of the total world population as recently as the mid‐1950s. All of this increase will occur in the countries currently classified as less developed; in fact, as a result of their anticipated persistent below‐replacement levels of fertility, the more developed regions as a whole would experience declining population size beginning about 2020, and would register a net population loss of some 33 million between 2000 and 2050. A report prepared by the UN Population Division and released on 21 March 2000 addresses some of the implications of the changes in population size and age structure that low‐fertility countries will be likely to experience. The 143‐page report, issued under the eyecatching title Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?, highlights the expected magnitude of these changes by the imaginative device of answering three hypothetical questions. The answer to each of these questions is predicated on the assumption that some specified demographic feature of various country or regional populations would be maintained at the highest level that feature would exhibit, in the absence of international migration, in the United Nations' medium population projections (as revised in 1998) during the period 1995–2050. The selected demographic features are total population size, the size of the working‐age population (15–64 years), and the so‐called potential support ratio: the ratio of the working‐age population to the old‐age population (65 years and older). The illustrative device chosen for accomplishing the specified feats of preserving the selected demographic parameters (i.e., keeping them unchanged up to 2050 once their highest value is attained) is international migration. Hence the term “replacement migration.” Given the low levels of fertility and mortality now prevailing in the more developed world (and specifically in the eight countries and the two overlapping regions for which the numerical answers to the above questions are presented in the report), and given the expected future evolution of fertility and mortality incorporated in the UN population projections, the results are predictably startling. The magnitudes of the requisite compensatory migration streams tend to be huge relative both to current net inmigration flows and to the size of the receiving populations; least so in the case of the migration needed to maintain total population size and most so in the case of migration needed to counterbalance population aging by maintaining the support ratio. Reflecting its relatively high fertility and its past and current record of receiving a large influx of international migrants, the United States is a partial exception to this rule. But even for the US to maintain the support ratio at its highest—year 1995—level of 5.21 would require increasing net inmigration more than tenfold. The country, the report states, would have to receive 593 million immigrants between 1995 and 2050, or a yearly average of 10.8 million. The extreme case is the Republic of Korea, where the exercise calls for maintaining a support ratio of 12.6. To satisfy this requirement, Korea, with a current population of some 47 million, would need 5.1 billion immigrants between 1995 and 2050, or an average of 94 million immigrants per year. (In the calculations, the age and sex distribution of migrants is assumed to be the same as that observed in the past in the main immigration countries. The fertility and mortality of immigrants are assumed to be identical with those of the receiving population.) The “Executive Summary” of the report is reproduced below, with the permission of the United Nations. Chapters of the full report set out the issues that prompted the exercise; provide a selective review of the literature; explain the methodology and the assumptions underlying the calculations; and present the detailed results for the eight countries and two regions selected for illustrative purposes. A brief discussion of the implications of the findings concludes the report. As is evident even from the figures just cited, immigration is shown to be at best a modest potential palliative to whatever problems declining population size and population aging are likely to pose to low‐fertility countries. The calculations, however, vividly illustrate that demographic changes will profoundly affect society and the economy, and will require adjustments that remain inadequately appreciated and assessed. The criteria specified in the UN calculations—maintenance of particular demographic parameters at a peak value—of course do not necessarily have special normative significance. Past demographic changes, with respect notably to the age distribution as well as population size, have been substantial, yet they have been successfully accommodated under circumstances of growing prosperity in many countries. But the past may be an imperfect guide in confronting the evolving dynamics of low‐fertility populations. As the report convincingly states, the new demographic challenges will require comprehensive reassessments of many established economic and social policies and programs.     

Consequences of Family Policies on Childbearing Behavior: Effects or Artifacts?

This article argues for a more careful consideration of theoretical and methodological approaches in studies of the effects of public policies, labeled here as family policies, on childbearing behavior. We employ elements of comparative welfare‐state research, of the sociology of “constructed categories,” and of “the new institutionalism” to demonstrate that investigations into policy effects need to contextualize policies and need to reduce their complexity by focusing on “critical junctures,”“space,” and “uptake.” We argue that the effects of family policies can only be assessed properly if we study their impact on individual behavior. Event‐history models applied to individual‐level data are the state‐of‐the‐art of such an approach. We use selected empirical studies from Sweden to demonstrate that the type of approach that we advocate prevents us from drawing misleading conclusions.     

Policy Lessons of the East Asian Demographic Transition

The usual lessons drawn from East Asia's striking experience of health and fertility transition concern the efficacy of well‐designed government programs catering to an existing or ideationally stimulated demand. An alternative interpretation sees the demographic change—and the uptake of services—as a byproduct of social and economic development together with, in some cases, strong government pressures. This article probes more deeply into this experience, seeking to identify common features of development design and administration that underlay it. The broad sequence entailed, initially, establishment of an effective, typically authoritarian, system of local administration, providing (sometimes incidentally) a framework for promotion and service delivery in health, education, and family planning. Subsequent economic liberalization offered new opportunities for upward mobility—and greater risks of backsliding—but along with erosion of social capital and the breakdown or privatization of service programs. The study is mainly focused on seven countries: Taiwan and South Korea (“tiger” economies), Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia (“second wave” countries), and China and Vietnam (“market‐Leninist” economies). The period is roughly from the 1960s to the 1990s.     

Immigration to the UK from High‐Fertility Countries: Intergenerational Adaptation and Fertility Convergence

The fertility of immigrants' children increasingly shapes the ethnic diversity of the population in Western Europe. However, few data are available on the fertility patterns of immigrants and their offspring. This article provides new fertility estimates of immigrants and immigrants' children by ethnic group in the United Kingdom that may provide better‐informed fertility assumptions for future population projection models. The impact of migration‐specific tempo effects on the period TFR of immigrants is analyzed. Among the results, intergenerational fertility transitions strongly contribute both to fertility convergence between ethnic groups and to fertility “assimilation” or “intergenerational adaptation” to the UK mainstream childbearing behavior. Ethnic fertility convergence, particularly marked for populations originating from high‐fertility countries, reflects in part decreasing fertility in sending countries and in part intergenerational adaptation to the UK mainstream. Higher educational enrollment of the daughters of immigrants may partly explain their relatively lower fertility.     

Policies Addressing the Tempo Effect in Low‐Fertility Countries

The possible negative consequences of current low fertility levels are causing increasing concern, particularly in countries where the total fertility rate is below 1.5. Social inertia and self‐reinforcing processes may make it difficult to return to higher levels once fertility has been very low for some time, creating a possible “low‐fertility trap.” Policies explicitly addressing the fertility‐depressing effect of increases in the mean age at child‐bearing (the tempo effect) may be a way to raise period fertility to somewhat higher levels and help escape the “low‐fertility trap” before it closes. Reforms in the school system may affect the timing of childbearing by lowering the age at completion of education. A more efficient school system, which provides the same qualifications with a younger school‐leaving age, is potentially capable of increasing period fertility and hence exerting a rejuvenating effect on the age composition, even if the levels of cohort fertility remain unchanged. Such policies may also have a positive effect on completed cohort fertility.     

The United Nations on World Population in 2300

The Population Division of the United Nations biennially issues detailed population estimates and projections covering the period 1950–2050. The most recent revision of these estimates and projections, the 2002 assessment, was released in February 2003. At irregular intervals, the Population Division also publishes long‐range projections. The most recent of these, covering the period up to 2150, was issued in 2000, based on the 1998 assessment. On 9 December 2003, the Population Division released the preliminary report on a new set of long‐range projections, dovetailing with the 2002 assessment, that extend over a much longer time span: up to 2300 ( http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/longrange2.htm ). Unlike previous long‐range projections, which, apart from China and In‐dia, were prepared for large regional groupings only, the new projections are elaborated separately for 192 countries. Given the enormous uncertainties of the character of demographic trends over such an extended period, the information content of these projections is somewhat elusive. However, they are expected to be used to provide the demographic input for long‐range models of global climate change. Long‐range population projections also serve to demonstrate the unsustainability of certain seemingly plausible assumptions as to the future course of particular demographic parameters. In the present case, for example, the high‐fertility projection, reflecting a sustained total fertility rate at the relatively modest level of 2.35, by 2300 would yield a population of some 32 billion in the countries now classified as less developed. Or, in a yet more extreme exercise 0/reductio ad absurdum, maintaining constant fertility at present rates would result in a population size of some 120 trillion in the countries now classified as least developed. Apart from the “high fertility” and “constant fertility” models just cited, the projections are calculated for three additional instructive variants: “low fertility,”“medium fertility,” and “zero growth.” Underlying each of the five variants is a single assumption on mortality change: expectation of life at birth creeping up, country‐by‐country, to a 2300 level ranging between 88 and 106 years. International migration is set at zero throughout the period 2050‐2300 in each variant. Thus the projections are unabashedly stylized and surprise‐free, providing a simple demonstration of the consequences, in terms of population size and age structure, of clearly stated assumptions on the future course of demographic variables. Reproduced below is the Executive Summary of the preliminary report on the UN long‐range projections presented to a UN technical working group on long‐range projections at its December 2003 meeting in New York and slightly revised afterward. A full final report on this topic by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat will be published later in 2004.     

Fertility and Life Satisfaction in Rural Ethiopia

Despite recent strong interest in the link between fertility and subjective well-being, the focus has centered on developed countries. For poorer countries, in contrast, the relationship remains rather elusive. Using a well-established panel survey—the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS)—we investigate the empirical relationship between fertility and life satisfaction in rural Ethiopia, the largest landlocked country in Africa. Consistent with the fertility theories for developing countries and with the sociodemographic characteristics of rural Ethiopia, we hypothesize that this relationship varies by gender and across life stages, being more positive for men and for parents in old age. Indeed, our results suggest that older men benefit the most in terms of life satisfaction from having a large number of children, while the recent birth of a child is detrimental for the subjective well-being of women at reproductive ages. We address endogeneity issues by using lagged life satisfaction in ordinary least squares regressions, through fixed-effects estimation and the use of instrumental variables.     

The Johannesburg Summit on Health and Sustainable Development

The World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 26 August‐4 September 2002. The meeting was a follow‐up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 but with a mandate broader than that of the Rio conference: the Summit was to consider strategies toward sustainable development in all its dimensions. According to the opening paragraph of the Plan of Implementation adopted by the Johannesburg Summit, the Rio conference “provided the fundamental principles and the programme of action for achieving sustainable development.” But while reaffirming commitment to the Rio principles, the Plan states that it intends to “further build on the achievements made since UNCED and expedite the realization of the remaining goals.” A topic conspicuously missing from the deliberations of the Rio conference was population, even though rapid population growth has a plausible bearing on sustainable development and specifically on the problem of poverty, an issue at the center of the discussions concerning sustainability. It had been expected that Johannesburg would make amends for that omission. In the ten years between the two conferences, the size of the world's population increased by some 790 million persons. Of this growth, 754 million, or 95 percent, occurred in the countries the United Nations classifies as “less developed.” The population of these countries grew by 18 percent between the two conferences, as compared with a 3 percent growth in the more developed countries. The countries classified as “least developed“—a subset of the less developed countries consisting of 48 countries, predominantly African, with a 2002 population of nearly 700 million—grew during the interconference period by 29 percent. This record of population growth since the Rio conference may be supplemented by the projections of the United Nations up to 2050. The medium variant of these projections for the next 48 years envisages a slight population decline in the more developed countries and an addition of some 2 billion persons to the less developed group. For the least developed countries, the UN projects a population of more than 1.8 billion in 2050, some 164 percent larger than the current population size. Although the magnitudes of past population growth and its likely future dynamics are well known, they attracted very little attention at the Johannesburg meeting. The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, a concise political document issued at the closing of the conference along with the Plan of Implementation, pledges “to place particular focus on, and give priority attention to, the fight against the worldwide conditions that pose severe threats to the sustainable development of our people.” It then proceeds to specifics: “Among these conditions are: chronic hunger; malnutrition; foreign occupation; armed conflicts; illicit drug problems; organized crime; corruption; natural disasters; illicit arms trafficking; trafficking, in persons; terrorism; intolerance and incitement to racial, ethnic, religious and other hatreds; xenophobia; and endemic, communicable and chronic diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis” (Paragraph 19 of the Declaration,). The Plan of Implementation, a 27,000‐word document, was the main product of the Johannesburg meeting. Apart from a mention of the Cairo conference on Population and Development, the Plan's treatment of population issues is confined to health. The relevant section—section VI, titled Health and sustainable development—is reproduced below in full. (Paragraph numbers have been retained.) It presents a statement of goals couched in general exhortative terms (“integrate,”“promote,”“provide,”“improve,”“develop”), and specifies some quantitative targets, notably to reduce “by the year 2015, mortality rates for infants and children under 5 by two thirds, and maternal mortality rates by three quarters,” and “reduction of HIV prevalence among young men and women aged 15–24 by 25 per cent in the most affected countries by 2005 and globally by 2010.” The full text of the Plan can be found at http://www.un.org/jsummitlhtmlldocumentslsummit_docsl21Q9_planfinal.htm