Today in USAID's ImpactBlog, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah writes from the London Summit on Family Planning. Dr. Shah's post discusses the the relationship between family planning, ending preventable child death, decreasing maternal death, and stabilizing a society's prosperity:

To support the aspirations of the London Summit, the United States commits the power of its voice and example, as well as resources, technical support and leadership that will lead to new and innovative ways of substantively reducing unmet need for family planning. Over the course of several decades, the U.S. has provided roughly 50 percent of total donor funding in family planning. In the last four years alone—during the Obama Administration—we’ve increased our commitments 40 percent, going from $470 million in 2008 to $640 million today.  This past year, we reached more than 84 million women—helping to prevent 15,000 maternal deaths and save the lives of more than 230,000 infants.