Bangladesh's girls value family as much as ever, yet for nearly half, marriage comes before they can choose

Every World Population Day, the global conversation turns anxious, about falling birth rates, ageing societies and "population decline." Bangladesh can approach it with confidence: few countries have done more, with fewer resources, to put people at the centre of development. But the honest measure of progress is not the birth rate. It is whether young people can build the families they want, in a world fair and hopeful enough to let them, and, above all, whether a young woman can make the choices that shape her own life.

In the 1970s, a woman in Bangladesh had, on average, close to seven children, and fewer than one in ten couples used any form of contraception. Today the total fertility rate sits around replacement level — 2.4 births per woman in 2025 — and about six in ten couples use contraception. Demographers around the world still study "the Bangladesh model": a whole-of-government commitment that placed population and reproductive health in the very first national plan, then carried it to the doorstep through an army of community health workers, most of them women serving women.

This is the foundation on which the next generation now stands, and new evidence tells us exactly what that generation wants. UNFPA's newly launched report Lives, Choices and Futures, drawing on the voices of more than 108,000 young adults across 73 countries, including Bangladesh, dismantles the assumption that young people have simply stopped valuing family. They have not. More than two thirds want to marry or live with a partner. Two children remains the most common ideal family size across most of the world. What young people ask for, overwhelmingly, is the security to act on those hopes: financial stability tops their list of preconditions for both partnership (81%) and parenthood (88&), alongside stable employment (87%) and emotional readiness (85%).

Bangladesh's own young people echo this clearly. Among 1,417 young adults surveyed here, more than two thirds say they are deeply worried about conflict, economic insecurity and environmental risk, yet fully two thirds still feel positive about their own future. That is a portrait of resilience. Their aspirations remain intact: among those in their late thirties without children, more than nine in ten say they still want them. The desire for family is nearly universal. What young people are navigating is not a change of heart, but a question of timing.

But timing is not a choice every young person is free to make. For girls in particular, another reality cuts across this optimism: almost half of women now aged 20 to 24 — 47.2% — were married before their eighteenth birthday. This is the paradox at the heart of Bangladesh's progress. The same country that achieved gender parity in secondary school, with girls now enrolling at a higher rate than boys, still sees nearly one in two girls married as a child. And the trend is worsening for the youngest: the share of adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 who are currently married has risen from 32.9 to 38.9%, while 24% of girls in that age group are already mothers or pregnant with their first child. At the current pace, ending child marriage in Bangladesh would take more than 200 years. No girl's future should be settled before she is old enough to choose it.

For a married girl, the consequences are far-reaching. Her schooling most often ends, traded for a household she did not choose, and pregnancy frequently arrives before she is ready. Decisions that should be hers, whether to keep studying, whether and when to work, whether and when to have a child, increasingly pass to others. Early marriage does not simply delay a girl's ambitions; it redirects the trajectory of her life, narrowing her choices at the very age they should be opening up. Ensuring that girls remain in school, delay marriage, and gain access to youth-friendly health services so that they  delay pregnancy till adulthood is one of the smartest — and fairest — economic investments a nation can make.

Economic opportunity represents another essential pillar of demographic resilience. Young people cannot be expected to build families or invest confidently in their futures if decent jobs, affordable housing and social protection remain beyond reach. Bangladesh's expanding economy has created significant opportunities, yet many young people continue to face unemployment, underemployment and informal work with limited security. Women, in particular, continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid care responsibilities, often forcing difficult choices between family aspirations and career development.

Supporting young people's aspirations therefore requires policies that make both work and family life possible. Investments in quality education, digital skills, entrepreneurship, childcare, social protection and decent employment are investments in demographic resilience.

Bangladesh is already moving in this direction, with a new rights-based National Population Policy 2025 and a first-ever National Family Planning Strategy 2025–2030 that shift the frame from population control to rights and choices — instruments UNFPA was proud to help shape. With roughly two thirds of the population of working age and a demographic dividend lasting until about 2040, the opportunity is enormous, but it will be realized only if girls can stay in school and marry and bear children when they choose.

That is where UNFPA's mandate is clear. Every young person should be able to exercise their reproductive rights and choices — to decide freely whether, when and how many children to have. Advancing that principle means keeping girls in school and out of early marriage and motherhood in childhood through expanding access to sexual and reproductive health services and information, deploying midwives, and putting the evidence before decision-makers. 

UNFPA has stood with Bangladesh for more than five decades, and will continue to, alongside the Government and communities. On this World Population Day, let us measure progress not by how many children are born, but by whether every young person, every girl, can build the family and the future they want. The aspiration is already there; our task is to meet it.

Catherine Breen Kamkong is currently serving as the Representative for UNFPA Bangladesh. 

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