Donor Government Funding for Family Planning in 2022

This report provides an analysis of donor government funding for family planning in low- and middle-income countries in 2022, the most recent year available, as well as trends over time. It includes both bilateral funding from donor governments and their contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). It is part of an effort by KFF to track such funding that began after the London Summit on Family Planning in 2012. Overall, we find that donor government funding for family planning declined between 2021 and 2022, due both to actual reductions in funding from most donor governments as well as the rise in the value of the U.S. dollar; this was the lowest level of funding since 2016.

Key findings include the following:

• Family planning funding from donor governments was US$1.35 billion in 2022 and accounted for approximately one-third of total resources estimated to be available for family planning globally ($4.0 billion).¹ The vast majority of funding is provided bilaterally (US$1.3 billion or 96%). The remainder – US$51.9 million (4%) – is for multilateral contributions to UNFPA’s core resources, adjusted for an estimated family planning share.
• This represents a decline of 9% (US$129.4 million) in 2022 compared to US$1.48 billion in 2021 and marked the lowest level of funding since 2016 ($1.31 billion).²
• While the decline was due to decreased bilateral funding by most donor governments (multilateral funding increased slightly), more than two-thirds of the overall decrease can be attributed to the rise of the U.S. dollar globally. Since donor governments provide data in their currency of origin, fluctuations in the exchange rate can have significant impacts on overall totals and trends as was the case in 2022 (funding from the U.S. wasn’t affected by these currency fluctuations).³
• Funding decreased from six donor governments in 2022 (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the U.K.), with some donors citing budgetary pressures associated with the humanitarian response to the conflict in Ukraine.⁴ These trends were the same after accounting for exchange rate fluctuations, though the decreases were smaller.³
• Funding from the U.S. remained flat, and two countries increased – the Netherlands and Norway.
• The U.S. continued to be the largest donor to family planning in 2022, accounting for 43% (US$582.9 million) of total funding from governments, followed by the Netherlands (US$217.4 million, 16%), the U.K. (US$174.7 million, 13%), Sweden (US$121.3 million, 9%) and Canada (US$88.3 million, 7%). However, when family planning funding is standardized by the size of donor economies, the Netherlands ranked first, followed by Sweden, and the U.K.; the U.S. ranked 7^th.