On this World Population Day, rather than focusing on how many of us there are, which countries are growing or shrinking, or where people are moving, it may be worth asking a different question: what is the future of population programming itself?

The question feels particularly urgent as development assistance comes under increasing pressure. Traditional donors, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and several European partners, have announced significant reductions in aid spending, with implications for social sectors expected.

But first, what do we mean by population programmes, and why do they matter? Population programmes are interventions that influence fertility, mortality, and migration in ways that support improved human development outcomes, or the measurable improvements in people’s lives, capabilities, and wellbeing that result from policies, programmes, or systemic change. Much of the focus of today’s programmes is to support countries progress through the demographic transition–the shift from high birth and death rates to longer lives and smaller families.

Donor-supported activities in this space have included family planning programmes, initiatives that help girls stay in school, and efforts to support women to participate fully in society. Crucially, they also include investments in strengthening partner government systems to better understand, shape, and respond to demographic change – helping ensure that health services, schools, jobs, infrastructure, and other public goods keep pace with the needs, aspirations, and rights of changing populations.

Historically, donor funding has played a central role in supporting population programmes, particularly family planning, but recent analysis shows this support is declining. As external funding becomes more constrained, government leadership of the population agenda is more important than ever. This means every donor-funded intervention needs a clear plan for how it will be taken on, led, and sustained by government over time.

Yet the track record is mixed. While some countries have increased domestic investment and leadership, overall progress has not kept pace with need. In many settings, external funding has declined without being matched by equivalent growth in domestic financing, political commitment, or institutional capacity, leaving critical population programmes vulnerable as donor support recedes.

Why?

An important part of the answer is that population as a whole is a highly sensitive topic. Questions relating to fertility, marriage, reproductive choices, and gender norms are often deeply intertwined with religious, cultural, and social values. It’s also highly politicised. In some contexts, population size is associated with political representation, subnational resource allocation, economic influence, and national identity. These incentives can make it difficult to sustain support for rights-based interventions intended to influence demographic outcomes.

One symptom of a broader institutional challenge is that demographic data and evidence still do not consistently make their way into planning and budgeting processes.

For years, development practitioners have argued that population data should inform decisions about schools, health facilities, housing, infrastructure, labour markets, and more. Demographic trends should also shape policies and programmes that respond to issues such as high adolescent childbearing, unmet need for family planning, and youth employment.

Yet demographic information too often remains locked in census reports, projections, and technical publications. The data may exist, but its implications for decision-makers are not clear. At the same time, capacity to analyse and apply demographic evidence remains uneven, particularly at subnational levels, where many planning and budgeting decisions are now made.

The result is a persistent gap between demographic evidence and government decision-making–and, ultimately, limited government ownership of the population agenda.

Population Programming in Action

This is one of the challenges we are tackling through the FCDO-funded WISH Dividend Programme's Policy & Systems component, led by Palladium alongside the UK Office for National Statistics.

The Palladium-led component, with partners PRB, EngenderHealth, and BBC Media Action, provides technical assistance to governments to help them address constraints to the demographic transition. It focuses on strengthening the systems, skills, and institutions needed for governments to lead planning for and response to demographic change.

Rather than creating parallel systems, our focus is on helping governments strengthen and lead their own.

Population issues need to be built into how governments normally operate. That means including them in official plans, paying for them through government budgets, assigning responsibility to government institutions, and using demographic information when making planning decisions. The goal is not to keep programmes donor-funded but to ensure governments can run them themselves.

Just a year into the programme, and we’ve seen some promising results.
In Malawi, WISH P&S supported the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Decentralisation to strengthen the use of demographic data for planning and budgeting across government. Following an initial training programme, the Ministry has now committed to scaling the approach nationally—co-financing rollout activities, providing government venues, mobilising participants, and using trainees from the first cohort to support delivery of training to additional ministries and all 28 district councils. Rather than remaining a donor-funded activity, the initiative is increasingly being led, resourced, and championed by government itself.

As donor resources decline, the future of population programming by local governments cannot rely on external financing alone. Lasting progress will depend on whether governments become effective stewards of the population agenda – owning it politically, financing it domestically, and embedding it within institutions.