Adding It Up: Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health

Adding It Up is an ongoing Guttmacher Institute project that estimates the need for, impact of and costs associated with providing essential sexual and reproductive health services. Its component studies illustrate the investment needed to ensure these services are available to all women of reproductive age (15­–49) and their newborns—as well as to adolescents, specifically—in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The latest Adding It Up study for all low- and middle-income countries features an in-depth report with estimates for 2019, and it is accompanied by a detailed methodology report; fact sheets that summarize overall needs, as well as the specific needs of adolescents; and a policy analysis that focuses on the United States’ role in addressing global sexual and reproductive health needs.

Adding It Up data on sexual and reproductive health for 132 LMICs is also available via our country profiles. Use the “Select a country profile” box on this page to explore country-specific interactive graphics that demonstrate the need for and use of modern contraception and maternal and newborn health care, as well as the impact and cost of fully investing in comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services.

Our newest Adding It Up resource is the 2022 Family Planning Investment Impact Calculator, an online tool that helps advocates and funders make the case for greater investment in contraceptive services. The calculator uses Adding It Up data to estimate the magnitude of health benefits that would stem from any given level of investment in family planning. It estimates impacts on the number of modern contraceptive users served; unintended pregnancies, unplanned births and abortions averted; women’s and girls’ lives saved; and cost savings achieved at the health system level.

Find more Adding It Up resources below.

 

 

 

 

Report cover with the title Adding It Up on it and three photos of women

Select a country profile

If all women in low-and middle-income countries wanting to avoid pregnancy were to use modern contraception, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths would drop by about two-thirds.