You keep linking to Holden’s email as evidence against malthusian concerns, but Rosling’s talk moved his opinion towards the concerns!
Well, I guess I see Holden’s email as an example of a reasonably well-informed and impartial person’s take on Malthusian concerns about developing world health aid:
The mainstream view is that improving health probably decreases population growth rather than increasing population growth.
This view seems to be based on looking at countries in which health care has improved “organically” rather than through outside intervention and so may be unrepresentative, in particular in absence of strong women’s rights & family planning the drop in population growth corresponding to improved health care may not happen.
Despite the previous point, at present there’s not enough evidence to count population growth as a negative unintended consequence of improving health.
My main concern about people with malthusian concerns is that they never spell out what those concerns are. Maybe fatal acute famines are better than chronic malnutrition, but largely for reasons that support medical interventions.
Can you say more about this? I’m curious. As I said, though I presently think that donating to VillageReach/StopTB has strong positive expected value I think that Malthusian concerns may be relevant and would appreciate more information.
If you have malthusian concerns, why don’t you spell them out? What will happen, why would that be bad? I’m sick of arguing against amorphous concerns.
When population of a country like Ethiopia exceeds the level that can be sustained by their agricultural production, and still the population growth continues fuelled by the international aid, it is a problem for distinct reasons:
The country will be dependent on aid. A policy change on the side of the donators could cause famine, and the country’s government could be easily blackmailed and become a puppet of their sponsors.
We aren’t successful in helping African countries to develop more efficient economy today. After their population doubles, it would be even more difficult.
There is certainly some limit which the population couldn’t surpass even with the aid of aid. When the population reaches that limit, we can expect famine, war or massive emmigration. Those would happen sooner without the aid, however in smaller scale, because the population would be smaller.
One can hope, of course, that somehow Africa will become developed and the population will stop growing enough soon. But there is little evidence that this will happen. The kind of aid which supports population growth doesn’t solve the problem of poverty. It only postpones the solution while the problem is growing in scale.
I expect one of them might be that any life’s saved might be lost in future rwanda-style genocides. If that was exactly malthusian.
I’d worry about encouraging population growth in water scarce areas as well. It would give less time for technical measures to be developed to meet the water needs.
If the infant is saved from diarrhea and dies 20 years later in a genocide, I’d say that is good for the infant. Perhaps one should be careful about calling that 20 DALYs, rather than one life. Of course, increased population may make war more likely. If one is a total utilitarian, the repugnant conclusion seems to me like a slam-dunk here. If one is an average utilitarian, this looks at first like a poor trade (let’s average just over a country, not the world).
Treating diarrhea probably has the effect of reducing not just mortality, but morbidity. When we saved the infant, we treated 100 other infants who would have lived. But now they’ll have healthier lives, probably happier and more productive. I think that should satisfy the average utilitarian. They’ll be more productive if all things are equal, but the increased expectation of catastrophe—famine or war—decreases perceived life-expectancy, and thus productivity. War is worse than famine in that it destroys property as well as people. I’m not sure where the balance lies, but I think productivity is improved by choosing war over diarrhea.
Productivity is important because it seems linked to demographic transition. Maybe malthusian concerns say that the best interventions are those which are best connected demographic transition, like girls’ education. But as to the question of whether curing diarrhea is a net benefit, I think it quite likely.
Amartya Sen is quite enthusiastic in choosing acute famine over chronic malnutrition (and China over India more generally). Disease is quite like chronic malnutrition in its effects on health and productivity. The more serious malthusian complaint is if we end up with chronic malnutrition. If we’re trading disease for chronic malnutrition, I don’t think we’re making things worse, though it may not be worth the bother. Solving acute famines to leave chronic ones is probably making things worse.
Fertility rates are very high in Africa as indicated by this graphic. If saving lives in the developing world does not indirectly result in a drop in fertility then it pushes in the direction of promoting exponential population growth with a large base.
In general I’m worried about the possibility of global natural resource shortage corresponding to our high rate of natural resource usage resulting in a future natural resource shortage which leads to a population crash, political instability of the nuclear powers, permanent obstruction of future technological development or even human extinction.
I’m worried that pushing in the direction of faster population growth may result in a global natural resource shortage sooner rather than later, before we have the chance to develop sustainable solutions for the demands that human lifestyles impose on Earth’s limited resources.
You do realize that African populations migrate to Europe and the Middle East by the hundreds of thousands per year and that by current projections the rate will soon rise to millions?
I upvoted your remark because this seems like the start of a useful conversation which has the potential to resolve my concerns.
What you say is true at present. But what about taking the long view, projecting ahead to Africa’s hypothetical technological development? The question is whether Africa will develop before or after we’ve developed sustainable solutions. I would guess that we’ll be noticeably past peak oil by the time Africa develops, but not completely sure about this, and maybe there are other future natural resource shortages to look out for?
There’s a sizeable minority that believes we’re at peak everything. I’m 75% certain aid to Africa will be at less than 10% of its current levels within two decades, either because we’ve basically dealt with the problem of resource scarcity, or because the developed world needs every scrap of fuel, food, and materiel it can hang on to.
Well, I guess I see Holden’s email as an example of a reasonably well-informed and impartial person’s take on Malthusian concerns about developing world health aid:
The mainstream view is that improving health probably decreases population growth rather than increasing population growth.
This view seems to be based on looking at countries in which health care has improved “organically” rather than through outside intervention and so may be unrepresentative, in particular in absence of strong women’s rights & family planning the drop in population growth corresponding to improved health care may not happen.
Despite the previous point, at present there’s not enough evidence to count population growth as a negative unintended consequence of improving health.
Can you say more about this? I’m curious. As I said, though I presently think that donating to VillageReach/StopTB has strong positive expected value I think that Malthusian concerns may be relevant and would appreciate more information.
If you have malthusian concerns, why don’t you spell them out? What will happen, why would that be bad? I’m sick of arguing against amorphous concerns.
When population of a country like Ethiopia exceeds the level that can be sustained by their agricultural production, and still the population growth continues fuelled by the international aid, it is a problem for distinct reasons:
The country will be dependent on aid. A policy change on the side of the donators could cause famine, and the country’s government could be easily blackmailed and become a puppet of their sponsors.
We aren’t successful in helping African countries to develop more efficient economy today. After their population doubles, it would be even more difficult.
There is certainly some limit which the population couldn’t surpass even with the aid of aid. When the population reaches that limit, we can expect famine, war or massive emmigration. Those would happen sooner without the aid, however in smaller scale, because the population would be smaller.
One can hope, of course, that somehow Africa will become developed and the population will stop growing enough soon. But there is little evidence that this will happen. The kind of aid which supports population growth doesn’t solve the problem of poverty. It only postpones the solution while the problem is growing in scale.
I’m unsure of the exact claims.
I expect one of them might be that any life’s saved might be lost in future rwanda-style genocides. If that was exactly malthusian.
I’d worry about encouraging population growth in water scarce areas as well. It would give less time for technical measures to be developed to meet the water needs.
If the infant is saved from diarrhea and dies 20 years later in a genocide, I’d say that is good for the infant. Perhaps one should be careful about calling that 20 DALYs, rather than one life. Of course, increased population may make war more likely. If one is a total utilitarian, the repugnant conclusion seems to me like a slam-dunk here. If one is an average utilitarian, this looks at first like a poor trade (let’s average just over a country, not the world).
Treating diarrhea probably has the effect of reducing not just mortality, but morbidity. When we saved the infant, we treated 100 other infants who would have lived. But now they’ll have healthier lives, probably happier and more productive. I think that should satisfy the average utilitarian. They’ll be more productive if all things are equal, but the increased expectation of catastrophe—famine or war—decreases perceived life-expectancy, and thus productivity. War is worse than famine in that it destroys property as well as people. I’m not sure where the balance lies, but I think productivity is improved by choosing war over diarrhea.
Productivity is important because it seems linked to demographic transition. Maybe malthusian concerns say that the best interventions are those which are best connected demographic transition, like girls’ education. But as to the question of whether curing diarrhea is a net benefit, I think it quite likely.
Amartya Sen is quite enthusiastic in choosing acute famine over chronic malnutrition (and China over India more generally). Disease is quite like chronic malnutrition in its effects on health and productivity. The more serious malthusian complaint is if we end up with chronic malnutrition. If we’re trading disease for chronic malnutrition, I don’t think we’re making things worse, though it may not be worth the bother. Solving acute famines to leave chronic ones is probably making things worse.
Fertility rates are very high in Africa as indicated by this graphic. If saving lives in the developing world does not indirectly result in a drop in fertility then it pushes in the direction of promoting exponential population growth with a large base.
In general I’m worried about the possibility of global natural resource shortage corresponding to our high rate of natural resource usage resulting in a future natural resource shortage which leads to a population crash, political instability of the nuclear powers, permanent obstruction of future technological development or even human extinction.
I’m worried that pushing in the direction of faster population growth may result in a global natural resource shortage sooner rather than later, before we have the chance to develop sustainable solutions for the demands that human lifestyles impose on Earth’s limited resources.
There is so little trade with Africa that its increasing population is not going to affect the global resource market.
You do realize that African populations migrate to Europe and the Middle East by the hundreds of thousands per year and that by current projections the rate will soon rise to millions?
I upvoted your remark because this seems like the start of a useful conversation which has the potential to resolve my concerns.
What you say is true at present. But what about taking the long view, projecting ahead to Africa’s hypothetical technological development? The question is whether Africa will develop before or after we’ve developed sustainable solutions. I would guess that we’ll be noticeably past peak oil by the time Africa develops, but not completely sure about this, and maybe there are other future natural resource shortages to look out for?
There’s a sizeable minority that believes we’re at peak everything. I’m 75% certain aid to Africa will be at less than 10% of its current levels within two decades, either because we’ve basically dealt with the problem of resource scarcity, or because the developed world needs every scrap of fuel, food, and materiel it can hang on to.