"If you worry about population, shift your concern to people."

I first encountered those words as a student at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam, graduating in 1999. They were the title of a Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs policy paper published that same year, capturing the rights-based thinking that had gathered momentum after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Its central message was remarkably simple: successful population policy is, above all, about investing in people.

Nearly three decades on, this year's World Population Day carries the admirable theme of empowering young people to create the families they want in a fair and hopeful world. Yet it also exposes an uncomfortable truth.

We have become extraordinarily skilled at commemorating international days while investing far too little in the circumstances and prerequisites that make their goals achievable.

This is what I have come to think of as development hollowism: eloquent declarations, carefully designed campaigns, annual seminars and polished presentations standing in for sustained investment in human development.

The evidence, accumulated over decades and across continents, is remarkably consistent. Countries that have achieved sustained fertility decline have generally done so by combining voluntary family planning with investments in girls' education, primary healthcare, women's economic participation, child survival and gender equality. Human development drives demographic transition far more effectively than demographic targets drive human development.

Pakistan, however, has too often treated family planning as a........

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