
African child mortality: The best story in development - ph0rque
http://www.economist.com/node/21555571
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redwood
The flip-side to reduced infant mortality is typically a population boom (at
least this was the case in the 50s and 60s). I'm living in Bangladesh right
now where the country really suffers due to over-crowding born out of that era
which means there's not enough agricultural land to work for most people,
leaving most people under-employed and impoverished.

Of course reduction in infant mortality is good, but it can be coupled with
problems later if family planning is not also brought into families at the
_exact_ same time.

If family planning is delayed by one generation compared with the reduction in
infant mortality, a country's population can rise exponentially very quickly
which is highly destabilizing.

The Vatican and others stand in the way to realizing family planning
everywhere...

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dereg
I think you're mixing up the causal relationship between infant mortality,
population growth, and economic growth. High population growth does not
necessitate low economic growth. In fact, it's economic growth that tends to
determine the rate of population growth, not the other way around.

~~~
Symmetry
It depends. If capital accumulation is an important limiting factor in your
country's growth, as it is in most of Africa, then adding more people will
tend to increase the overall GDP but decrease the per capita GDP. If you're at
the productivity frontier, however, and you're more limited by your ability to
figure out how to use more capital (innovation). In this case there is still a
small marginal return on having more capital per worker, but every worker is
also a source of more innovation so its really hard to say whether adding more
people (up to a certain point) will increase or decrease the per capita GDP.

Generally speaking, when a country develops to a certain point it gets what's
called a demographic dividend[1]. The population has been growing rapidly in
the past, so there aren't that many old people to take care of. With wealth
people start having less babies, though, so there are also a relatively small
number of children to take care of relative to the number of working adults.
Countries in this position can, if they manage to avoid messing up, grow very
rapidly.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend>

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lincolnq
You can fund insecticide treated bed nets in developing countries by donating
to Against Malaria Foundation (<http://www.againstmalaria.com>), which is
currently estimated to be the #1 most impactful charity for your dollar in the
world, as determined by GiveWell (<http://givewell.org>).

~~~
Symmetry
I'm always a bit worried about giving to humanitarian charities in Africa,
just because it gives warlords a way to turn refugees into a lootable
resource[1]. Aid organizations want to help refugees, and are generally
willing to give warlords money in order to be allowed access to those
refugees.

This was a big factor in the start of the Congolese Civil War. In Rwanada
after the the genocide the perpetrators fled into Congo and many Hutus,
fearing that the Tutsi forces would want revenge, fled with them. In the Congo
the genocidaires were able to confiscate and resell part of the aid, and
charge rent to aid agencies, and use the money buy weapons to arm the people
there in the hopes of retaking the country. The new Tutsi Rwandan government,
not willing to let this happen, decided to invade. And since Mobutu of Zaire
had been harboring insurgents from all the other neighboring countries, they
all decided to help. Thus began the Congo Civil War. However, rereading the
section in Wikipedia on the refugee crisis it seems that Médecins Sans
Frontières and most of the other independant aid organizations were smart
enough to realize what was happening and leave so they couldn't be used - and
it was the mostly UN that was still contributing money and supplies when the
fighting started[2]. So maybe you should give money to aid organization after
all.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse>
[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis>

~~~
lincolnq
I'm glad you know so much about this, but don't let your knowledge prevent you
from doing the right thing. All I know is that Givewell seems extremely
thorough, and holistic in their thoroughness. If there were a major effect
such as the one you describe (warlords looting villages for bed nets), I
expect that Givewell would recognize it and incorporate it into their
estimates of cost-effectiveness for charities. Givewell is really very good.
(If you want evidence for this, read some of their in-depth charity analyses
and see how many factors they consider.)

And if the effect of warlords looting villages for their bed nets is _not_
large enough to make a significant negative impact on the charity's
effectiveness, then it still seems like one of the best possible uses of money
to do good in the world.

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kevinpet
I hate these government-accounting style stories. The numbers reported in the
graph are the percent change in infant mortality relative to the rate of
change to meet MDG. Is it just me, or would it be more useful to illustrate an
article about infant mortality rates by a graph of the actual numbers for
infant mortality in these countries?

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carleverett
This backs up Hans Rosling's talk on "The best statistics you've ever seen"
pretty well:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html)

The world is definitely improving - from a health perspective. Of course you
could talk about overpopulation as a chronic global problem as well, but in my
opinion education on birth control will improve enough over the next few
decades to help combat that.

~~~
tomjen3
My greatest problem with that talk is that he gloss completely over the
countries that haven't improved (in particular Congo/Zaire) and never will.

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kristoffer
I wonder how this will affect Africa as a continent. The article doesn't
mention possible effects this could have on these nations, such an analysis
would be interesting to read.

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learc83
Fantastic news. I wonder how much of this is a result of the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation's war on malaria?

~~~
chernevik
It would be very hard to tell. The earliest and biggest public health
improvements are driven by simple but powerful measures: increased calorie
counts, clean water, improved sanitation. Only once these are satisficed do
things like health care and immunizations begin to matter at the margin.

Something like malaria nets sounds cheap and simple enough to be a plausible
driver. But even then, to a malnourished kid the nutrition probably matters
first.

Even extensive efforts, occurring amid improvements on the fundamentals, would
probably be lost in the noise.

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rokhayakebe
I think education and the internet also have lots to do with this decline.
People in the third world have seen a huge increase in internet adoption,
which facilitates second hand learning; they are now more aware and educated
and can take better preventive actions. Great news.

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iRobot
Step One achieved. Now if you could just feed and educate the little fellows
and keep them from having too many kids and stop their (generally) useless and
corrupt governments from destroying their countries and killing each other,
the world would truly be a nicer place.

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J3L2404
Stories like this often don't get traction because it doesn't play into the
news narrative. Doom sells.

EDIT: Why is that? Why does doom sell?

~~~
jacoblyles
It's lame to be the guy who thinks the status quo is pretty good and that
things are progressing nicely. It won't win you many friends at parties.
Empirically, it's socially optimal to be the guy who insists we have to smash
capitalism, or that the West is exploiting Africa and keeping it poor, or that
if we don't cut our economic production by 20% in the next 10 years then
nature will revolt and kill us all. Things like that sell.

