You’ve brought up a common concern, one that many people have when they first learn about organizations like AMF. I’d recommend reading GiveWell’s note on overpopulation on their “Frequently Asked Questions” page.
There are a few core arguments against the points you’ve made here:
1) Saving the lives of children can actually reduce population growth. Some research shows that birthrates tend to fall as child mortality decreases, because parents can feel more certain that they’ll have at least some children who reach adulthood.
(This makes intuitive sense: if you have a three-year-old and a one-year-old in a country where 20% of children die between the ages of three and eighteen, you might want a third child to make sure you have a family legacy/companionship in your old age, where this wouldn’t be the case if only 0.2% of children died between those ages.)
2) Overpopulation is good for the world, because every person born has the potential to contribute to solving our problems and making the world a better place. After all, denser cities tend to produce more companies and patents, and some of the world’s most crowded nations are among its richest and most productive. A further point: Adding more people to the world could help us develop economically and reach a point where we can easily spread out into places that were previously too expensive/remote to inhabit, whether that’s desert land or outer space.
3) Even if overpopulation is bad, it’s still good to save the lives of children. Telling parents that they can’t protect their families from malaria because we want to protect wildlife seems like the wrong moral path to take.
I won’t get into my personal views on these points, but all three present opportunities to reconsider your views, if you’d like.
You’ve brought up a common concern, one that many people have when they first learn about organizations like AMF. I’d recommend reading GiveWell’s note on overpopulation on their “Frequently Asked Questions” page.
There are a few core arguments against the points you’ve made here:
1) Saving the lives of children can actually reduce population growth. Some research shows that birthrates tend to fall as child mortality decreases, because parents can feel more certain that they’ll have at least some children who reach adulthood.
(This makes intuitive sense: if you have a three-year-old and a one-year-old in a country where 20% of children die between the ages of three and eighteen, you might want a third child to make sure you have a family legacy/companionship in your old age, where this wouldn’t be the case if only 0.2% of children died between those ages.)
2) Overpopulation is good for the world, because every person born has the potential to contribute to solving our problems and making the world a better place. After all, denser cities tend to produce more companies and patents, and some of the world’s most crowded nations are among its richest and most productive. A further point: Adding more people to the world could help us develop economically and reach a point where we can easily spread out into places that were previously too expensive/remote to inhabit, whether that’s desert land or outer space.
3) Even if overpopulation is bad, it’s still good to save the lives of children. Telling parents that they can’t protect their families from malaria because we want to protect wildlife seems like the wrong moral path to take.
I won’t get into my personal views on these points, but all three present opportunities to reconsider your views, if you’d like.