I am ridiculously late to the party, and I must confess that I have not read the entire article.
My comment is about what I would expect to happen if EA decided to shift towards encouraging pro-growth policies. What I have to say is perhaps a refining of objection 5.4, politicization. It is how I perceive this would be instantiated. My perceptions are informed by being from a middle-income country (Brazil) and living in another (Chile), while having lived in the developed world (America) to know what it’s like.
The authors correctly acknowledge that this has a “politicized nature”. For the time being, the only way to enact pro-growth policies would be to influence those who hold political power in the target countries.
My concern about this is: people in such countries do not want these policies. They show that by how they think, how they act, how they vote, how they protest. Here in Chile, for example, people have been fighting tooth and nail against the policies that made the country the wealthiest, most educated one in South America, the only OECD member in the subcontinent. The content of the protests is explicitly against the pro-market policies that have prevailed for the last 40 years here. It is likely that an April referendum on a new constitution will pass, and replace the current basic law with another, much less growth-oriented.
It is worth noting that late-development countries where pro-growth policies have been enacted were often authoritarian at the time (South Korea, Taiwan, Chile), or still are (China, Singapore); even democracies like India and Indonesia are not shining beacons of civil liberties. Poor democracies, as a rule, do not consistently choose growth.
The text points out: “However, it is worth noting that EA funders are already involved in some highly politicised work, such as advocacy for increasing migration and criminal justice reform.” This is true, but there is one factor to consider, and I’ll put it in an intended humorous way, hoping that it will not be taken as hostility because there is zero intent of that: you are all a bunch of gringos! Obviously this does not matter to discern whether what you are saying or doing is right or wrong, but there is an exceedingly easy (and wrong) pattern to match against, that will raise objections instantly as soon as EA decides to try to influence our countries towards growth: you will be perceived as greedy gringos trying to exploit us for your own good.
And why do I keep using the second person, when I consider myself as much of an effective altruist as the next person? Because there are not nearly enough of us here to influence policy. I would love to know how to do it, but I find it highly unlikely. Even if we were more numerous, at our current size (just me here in Chile that I know of, about one or two dozen of people with at least a vague attachment to EA ideas in Brazil) we already cannot coordinate politically (I have no idea who most of the others voted for in 2018, and there was no talk of it whatsoever that I recall). And the same pattern I mentioned above can easily be reused to portray us as sellouts.
So, in short, the big question about EA developing the world is, in my opinion, how to make people want it.
You should first find out how to make people (justifiably) trust those policies.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re in some sort of stalemate here. A can say: “economics show that, unless you adopt pro-business policies – e.g., lower your taxes, slash labor and consumer regulations – investors will avoid this country.” And B replies: “social science shows that, unless you adopt redistributive policies – e.g., tax the rich, protect workers and consumers – people won’t support the government.” Of course, that’s even worse when A and B identify themselves as belonging to specific classes—then it’s more a political bargain than a debate on economics. I’d like to know more about how developed countries actually faced this conundrum – as far as I know, very badly: 30 years later, the 80’s neoliberal policies are still the core of debates. But the difference between developed and developing countries regarding social trust (and trust in the government) is truly remarkable; I wonder what’s the direction of causality here.
But should we make people want pro-growth policies? I’m rather sceptic that there is a positive expected outcome from influencing certain politics. In the end, founding a think tank that lobbies in favor of development policies is, in a way, to believe we know better than development country voters themselves what is best for them (assuming we’re talking about functional democracies).
Although that line of argument may be attractive for a few reasons already mentioned on the forum (because people don’t trust institutions, because they lack basic education, because their education is leftist-biased etc), I’d argue that’s a very strong and probably wrong caveat.
Given that growth economics is a controversial subject, for the sake of argument let’s assume that, after thorough research, we could be 80% sure that Party X would be better for GDP growth than Party Y. Are we really sure that voters don’t know what’s best for them with an 80% confidence interval?
Even if that were true, I’m not sure a pro-growth think tank would be the best course of action. Maybe voters were “wrong” because of malfunctioning elections or low voter turnout. In that case, I think it would be best to advocate in favor of better-functioning elections and increasing voter turnout.
In my opinion, if we disagree with voters about what’s best for them, it’s far more likely that we’re wrong. In a sense, that’s also the argument behind providing cash transfers—should be oblige people to spend money on what we think is right for them or simply give them the cash and trust they’ll know its best use?
This may be interpreted as a general critique of Politicisation, but I don’t think that applies to some of the other topics the EA community has been involved (animals can’t vote and I would argue this critique doesn’t apply to trade liberalization as well, but this isn’t the forum).
I was with you until the very end, then I got confused. Do you think it is fair to say that people don’t know what’s best for them when it comes to trade liberalization? (I do.)
I have way fewer qualms about saying that voters don’t know what’s best for them. Take, for example, South Africa. They use a pretty darn good voting system—single-ballot closed-list proportional representation with half the seats coming from province-level lists and the other half from nationwide lists—and I think the conduct of the elections themselves is decently well-organized; turnout has been dropping recently, but it was a whopping 89.3% in 1999.
I (cherry-)picked that one election because it brought Thabo Mbeki to the Presidency. He didn’t believe HIV caused AIDS; he thought AIDS is caused by vitamin deficiencies. He oriented the country’s policy based on that belief. Southern Africa is one of the areas with the highest incidence of the disease in the world. So, yeah, in that particular case the 66.5% of South Africans who voted for him clearly did not know what was best for them.
Also, it could be that we know with only 80% confidence what the best policies are, but we know with a much higher certainty that some policies (like subsidizing gas until it costs less than USD 0.05 a liter, like Hugo Chavez did) are completely wrong. Yet people still vote for them.
So yes, I am fairly confident that by and large people here in poor countries do not want growth, or that they do not want to avoid the policies that we know are harmful to growth.
You could point out that I cherry picked that one election, and that is true. But I think that, generally speaking, elections at least here in Latin America are broadly representative of people’s will, or as much as is possible in a presidential system (I think parliamentarianism is stricly better). AFAIK most countries use proportional representation rather than single-member districts, which are a big cause of dysfunctional-ness in e.g. US politics. Basically, we’re not stuck in the same inadequate equilibria as the US is. And turnout in, say, Brazil is pretty high, because voting is mandatory.
So, for democracies here in Latin America, I’d be fairly confident on “people don’t get pro-growth policies because they choose not to” over “people would want pro-growth policies but fail to get them because of poor election methods or low turnout”. (The low turnout hypothesis would also be fishy in that it would suggest a correlation between turning out to vote and being against growth; I’d find that correlation surprising if it existed. If there was any meaningful correlation, I’d expect it to go in the other direction.)
I’m way less confident in African elections. Some countries, like Ghana and South Africa, conduct their elections pretty well, I believe, but that’s probably not the norm in the continent. Most countries have very little experience with democracy (the 1999 election I mentioned was only the second one). Then again, some cultures in Africa have traits like:
the belief that albino body parts are somehow good for disease;
female genital mutilation;
insistence on contact with bodies of Ebola victims.
Things like this, as well as political views that are clearly a majority in the continent (e.g. non-acceptance of homosexuality, which is still illegal in nearly 2⁄3 of African countries) give me substantial confidence that yeah, they don’t know what’s best for their countries.
(I’m not saying should try to make them want growth; what I am saying is that, if the article is right that that’s what EAs should focus on, then we need to keep that in mind.)
Chile, for example, people have been fighting tooth and nail against the policies that made the country the wealthiest, most educated one in South America
Chile was ahead of much of South America in 1950, I wouldn’t give credit solely to the last 40 years of policies. Data for Education, Income, Life Expectancy only Cuba was ahead in terms of both Income and Education (by a little bit) every other country was behind including Brazil
where pro-growth policies have been enacted were often authoritarian at the time (South Korea, Taiwan, Chile), or still are (China, Singapore)
I would not put Singapore in the same bucket as China, overall agree that those countries were authoritarian, however plenty of other authoritarian countries did far worse. South Africa is one example. All of those countries in your list had universal basic education before economic growth, was that the driver in improvements in income?
India and Indonesia are not shining beacons of civil liberties. Poor democracies, as a rule, do not consistently choose growth
Indonesia had a much more authoritarian history than India. India’s first Prime Minister prioritized industrialization calling dams and heavy industry as temples of modern india. Kerala a state in India (followed by Tamil Nadu later) prioritized basic education and healthcare which formed the Kerala Model and now ranks at the top of Indian state by HDI
how to make people want it.
They do want it, but first to evaluate “pro-growth” arguments they need basic education.
Lucy, thank you for your comment, even though I disagree with most of it :)
Chile was ahead of much of South America in 1950
AFAIK, Chile crumbled in the 1970s. Electing Socialist Salvador Allende is an example of what I mean by “choosing anti-growth policies”; the first half of the Pinochet dictatorship didn’t help with growth (and, obviously, was a disaster for human rights).
I would not put Singapore in the same bucket as China
I agree they’re quite different, but the point is that in both countries the leadership can just outright decide to shift their policies with little in the way of popular resistance.
plenty of other authoritarian countries did far worse.
Yes, I am not claiming that being authoritarian is sufficient, it clearly isn’t. It is not necessary either, but that seems to have helped a whole lot in the cases I mentioned. Even Brazil didn’t have a proper central bank until the 1964 military coup.
Notice that me pointing out authoritarianism helped with pro-growth policies is not in any way an endorsement of these authoritarian regimes.
India’s first Prime Minister prioritized industrialization calling dams and heavy industry as temples of modern india.
India’s pre-1990s policies were not pro-growth, they were explicitly socialist. Industrialization per se is not inherently a pro-growth policy; countries need to be mindful of their comparative advantages. Nehru imposed all sorts of weird, distorting subsidies and price controls on things like coal and transportation. It was Manmohan Singh who implemented India’s first pro-growth policies, first as Finance Minister then as Prime Minister.
They do want it, but first to evaluate “pro-growth” arguments they need basic education.
That depends on the kind of education. The way I see it, subjects that would help would be reading, math, science, economics. Policies that claim for “more education”, in Brazil at least, tend to emphasize a completely different skillset: far leftist-biased history, far leftist-biased geography, far leftist-biased sociology, far leftist-biased philosophy, arts and culture (there’s this perception that “more culture” is some sort of panacea), and “critical thinking”, which is usually code for “opposing pro-growth policies”. So getting more of this type of education in Brazil would be *worse* for growth.
Chile ranks highest in Latin America in the PISA international evaluation, and these most-educated-people completely thrashed their own metro system last year while protesting against fare hikes; a good deal of the stations are still unusable, especially in the poorest parts of Santiago, even 3.5 months after the rampage.
Policies that claim for “more education”, in Brazil at least, tend to emphasize a completely different skillset: far leftist-biased history, far leftist-biased geography, far leftist-biased sociology, far leftist-biased philosophy, arts and culture (there’s this perception that “more culture” is some sort of panacea), and “critical thinking”, which is usually code for “opposing pro-growth policies”.
I do agree math & science are really wanting in the 3rd world, that they’re more fundamental for growth, and that we should focus on them. However, I disagree with the diagnosis; I believe the reason students are comparatively worse in hard sciences is, well, that they’re relatively harder—they require training and competence, from students AND teachers. If the problem were that we implemented leftist pro-culture policies, instead of improve hard sciences learning, we should at least observe improvements in some other capabilities—e.g., they should be able to read, interpret, and expose arguments on why, e.g., everything bad was caused by colonialism, patriarchy, etc.
I think we have a more complex inadequate equilibria: bad teachers in unions defending their interests, students from terrible backgrounds, talented people avoiding teaching (if you know calculus, why would you want to try to teach poor kids for a low salary?), and, of course, governments focused on whatever will win votes in the next election.
I do agree that any proposal on changing educational policies will meet a backlash, espacially from humanities, and that it will often carry a leftist taste—but we shouldn’t focus on this backlash, that’s not the cause of illiteracy, nor innumeracy. When we frame the issue as “the problem is that education is dominated by marxist thinking”, we’re just unnecessarily politicising it.
I’m not sure I get what the core of the disagreement is. Perhaps you could try expressing to me what your understanding of my view is, to clarify the comparison with yours? In general I think I agree with most of your comment.
life expectancy in Chile is on par with US, my interest about Chile would be more around how they have same life expectancy as US with less money.
India’s pre-1990s policies were not pro-growth, they were explicitly socialist.
Sure you can call them socialist, although I don’t like labels. Under Nehru basic education was neglected, as was basic healthcare. So does the label fit? I don’t want to argue or think about labels, it is just a waste of time. I am for universal basic education, and universal basic healthcare both of which were done better by China than India, or any “developed” country for that matter with their universal free public schooling systems.
Among countries that you gave as examples (South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore) had universal basic education provided by the government, I am not sure of Chile. Education is a necessary but not sufficient condition for economic growth.
Industrialization per se is not inherently a pro-growth policy;
My point about Nehru and industrialization was that there was a desire for economic growth, whether the right policies were followed is a different question.
It was Manmohan Singh who implemented India’s first pro-growth policies, first as Finance Minister then as Prime Minister.
It is not just the policies of Singh that made the difference, India had a large number of educated people by the year 1990 (along with enormous illiteracy). India and China opened up 10 years from each other, but India is 20-30 years behind China. This distance is mirrored in the education levels of China vs India, with China being ahead of India pre-1980 by 20-30 years.
Regarding Brazil, it is less educated than Chile or US, and its life expectancy is roughly 4 years behind both countries. Even today 18% of brazil’s kids have 6 years of schooling or less. In Chile that number is less than 2%
life expectancy in Chile is on par with US, my interest about Chile would be more around how they have same life expectancy as US with less money.
I think the outlier there is the US, not Chile.
Sure you can call them socialist, although I don’t like labels.
I’m just going by India’s self-identification.
Under Nehru basic education was neglected, as was basic healthcare.
I don’t know enough to comment on this.
I don’t want to argue or think about labels, it is just a waste of time.
I find this particular label useful because it seems to anticorrelate fairly well with pro-growth policies, especially as long as the system hasn’t obviously failed yet (e.g. even Venezuela is somewhat liberalizing now).
I am for universal basic education, and universal basic healthcare both of which were done better by China than India, or any “developed” country for that matter with their universal free public schooling systems.
Could I please have a source on China being that good, especially pre-Deng Xiaoping’s reforms? Does “better healthcare” include the several dozen million deaths in the Great Leap Ahead and other assorted atrocities? One has to keep in mind present-day China handpicks its best provinces to take part on PISA so the comparison is not apples to apples. Furthermore, this claim of Chinese citizens being particularly well-educated seems incongruous with the one about education being necessary to critcially evaluate public policy, since I’d expect Chinese education to be a total brainwash in favor of the Party.
My point about Nehru and industrialization was that there was a desire for economic growth, whether the right policies were followed is a different question.
Was there such desire? If that is the case, why were the right policies not followed? It is not like late 1940s economists couldn’t predict that Nehru’s policies would have pretty terrible results.
India and China opened up 10 years from each other, but India is 20-30 years behind China.
China also opened up more, and the one-child policy gave it a bigger demographic dividend. This by itself might be able to explain the growth difference (especially GDP per capita).
In Chile that number is less than 2%
Basic Education makes a difference.
That does not explain the riots here in Chile. In fact, it does sound like you think education is a panacea. What do you think of North Korean education? Cuban? Costa Rican?
Could I please have a source on China being that good, especially pre-Deng Xiaoping’s reforms?
The life expectancy of China has consistently gone up since 1960[1] (where the World Bank data starts).
There is a larger change, in absolute terms, from 1960 to 1980 (roughly when the reforms seriously started) than from 1980 to 2017. The increase is from 44.3 in 1960 to 66.4 in 1979, which is much larger than the rest of the world(52.6 to 62.6). To put it in perspective, if you’re an average[2] Chinese person, it means that your life expectancy rose ~ as rapidly as your age for 20 full years, so if the curve continued you’d never die.
Of course, this is partially because the low-hanging fruits are plucked first because they are easier to pluck, but nonetheless it’s substantive evidence that public health before the reforms must have done something right.
I enjoyed reading Development as Freedom by Sen in undergrad. It was an interesting read for me to get an understanding of non-consequentialist approaches to development, though I still think he underestimated the value of flow-through effects from GDP/scientific progress.
Thank you, Linch. My question was more focused on the education part than the health part, although I agree I should have made that clearer. The information you provided is still good to know, though—and impressive indeed.
On a meta-level, in general I think your conversation with lucy is overly acrimonious, and it would be helpful to identify clear cruxes, have more of a scout’s mindset, etc.
My read of the situation is that you (and other EAs upvoting or downvoting content) have better global priors, but lucy has more domain knowledge in the specific areas they chose to talk about.
I do understand that it’s very frustrating for you to be in a developing country and constantly see people vote against their economic best interests, so I understand a need to vent, especially in a “safe space” of a pro-growth forum like this one.
However, lucy likely also feels frustrated about saying what they believe to be true things (or at least well-established beliefs in the field) and getting what they may perceive to be unjustifiably attacked by people who have different politics or epistemic worldviews.
My personal suggestion is to have a stronger “collaborative truth-seeking attitude” and engage more respectfully, though I understand if either you or lucy aren’t up for it, and would rather tap out.
Thank you for your admonition, Linch. I’d point out I wouldn’t like to be grouped together with people up- or downvoting lucy; I haven’t voted on their comments except but one each way. As for the actual content of the conversation, this is not how I wanted it to be perceived; I wonder if you could help me identify what went wrong at a more detailed level, in private. I know about identifying clear cruxes and having a scout’s mindset, I endorse collaborative truth-seeking, yet here I failed to implement these things and it is not clear to me why; I could use help with that.
For onlookers, I want to say I really appreciate bruno’s top-level comment and that I have a lot of respect for bruno’s contributions, both here and elsewhere. The comment I made two levels up was probably stronger than warranted and I really appreciate bruno taking it in stride, etc.
Apologies for the delayed response. I was surprised at not finding a single source (after several minutes of searching) that plotted literacy rates across time, however:
Prior to 1949, China faced a stark literacy rate of only 15 to 25 percent, as well as lacking educational facilities with minimal national curricular goals. But as the Chinese moved into the 1950s under a new leadership and social vision, a national agenda to expand the rate of literacy and provide education for the majority of Chinese youth was underway.
At least naively, this suggests a ~60% absolute change in literacy rates from 1949-~1980, which is higher than in the next 40 years (since you cannot go above 100%).
I think the change here actually understates the impact of the first 30 years, since there’s an obvious delay between the implementation of a schooling system and the adult literacy rate (plus at least naively, we would expect the Cultural Revolution to have wiped out some of the progress).
One thing to flag with cobbling sources together is that there’s a risk of using different (implicit or explicit) operationalizations, so the exact number can’t be relied upon as much.
However, I think it’s significantly more likely than not that under most reasonable operationalizations of adult literacy, the first 30 years of China under CCP rule was more influential than the next 40.
The nation with highest life expectancy is Japan at 84 years, Chile, USA and every “developed” country is 75+ I would say all of them are on par
I’m just going by India’s self-identification.
Not useful. North Korea is Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, I guess republicans and democrats in USA should be thrilled. China is communist etc.. British were bringing civilization to the world etc...
Could I please have a source on China being that good
Ouch. My mistake. I should have written clearer. China outshined India in both education and healthcare. Given its history pre-independence it did very well in terms of health and education w.r.t. to “developed” countries. It did not cross rich nations, but did MUCH better than expected for a poor country. My observation was simply that “developed” countries had free public schooling (socialist schooling)
Does “better healthcare” include the several dozen million deaths in the Great Leap Ahead and other assorted atrocities?
Yes I am fully aware of China. I will simply quote Sen
Finally, it is important to note that despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former. Comparing India’s death rate of 12 per thousand with China’s of 7 per thousand, and applying that difference to the Indian population of 781 million in 1986, we get an estimate of excess normal mortality in India of 3.9 million per year. This implies that every eight years or so more people die in India because of its higher regular death rate than died in China in the gigantic famine of (p.215) 1958–61.37 India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.
a really sad thought for 2 reasons. very few people know about the tragedy in India. Secondly the deaths are continuing today preventable deaths are around 4 million a year worldwide.
Was there such desire? If that is the case, why were the right policies not followed? It is not like late 1940s economists couldn’t predict that Nehru’s policies would have pretty terrible results.
Partly people really had no idea. They thought Import substitution industrialization was the answer. Secondly after capitalist Britain ruled (and ruined India) for 200 years would any country want to follow the system of Britain? Which economists should be followed? British ones? How about Dr. Ambedkar’s policies? he is an economist.
China also opened up more, and the one-child policy gave it a bigger demographic dividend.
One child policy had no effect on China’s population size. It was their widespread education pre-1979 than reduced fertility.
That does not explain the riots here in Chile. In fact, it does sound like you think education is a panacea. What do you think of North Korean education? Cuban? Costa Rican?
The riots are a non-issue in the big scheme of things. Yes education is the fundamental factor for human well being. I have no idea about north korean education, cuban is very ideological I assume, no idea about Costa Rica, I assume it is similar to say Mexico.
Anyway it’s not what is taught in school that is important. It is the quantum jump that comes with being able to read, write, reason, interpret, understand the world that is important. As compared to a totally illiterate person.
The nation with highest life expectancy is Japan at 84 years, Chile, USA and every “developed” country is 75+ I would say all of them are on par
If pretty much all developed countries have a similar life expectancy (apart from Japan), and the USA is quite significantly richer, than yes, it is the US that’s the outlier, not Chile.
I’m just going by India’s self-identification.
I was going by India’s *socialist* self-identification. There’s reason to dispute e.g. North Korea’s democratic credentials. India said it was socialist, Venezuela still does (China appends the “with Chinese characteristics” euphemism/tautology, of course), Denmark doesn’t. I think it is reasonable to follow *that* self-identification, because I think the only people who would dispute that, say, Venezuela deserves the label are socialists who are sour about their ideology collapsing yet another country, and that is just not reasonable.
free public schooling (socialist schooling)
I dispute that equivalence.
Which economists should be followed?
The best ones.
One child policy had no effect on China’s population size. It was their widespread education pre-1979 than reduced fertility.
I would like an *excellent* source on that claim.
The riots are a non-issue in the big scheme of things.
If changing the Constitution is a non-issue, what counts as an issue to you?
Yes education is the fundamental factor for human well being
What exactly do you *mean* by education here?
cuban is very ideological I assume
That much more than Chinese one? Or is it okay for it to be ideological?
no idea about Costa Rica
As far as I know, it is excellent… yet the country is still poor.
Anyway it’s not what is taught in school that is important. It is the quantum jump that comes with being able to read, write, reason, interpret, understand the world that is important. As compared to a totally illiterate person.
Is your claim that, regardless of what is taught in school, as long as someone is not illiterate, they can adequately assess which policies are more conducive to growth and which ones are bad? Is this what you’re saying?
Feng, Wang; Yong, Cai; Gu, Baochang (2012). “Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China’s One-Child Policy?” (PDF). Population and Development Review. 38: 115–29. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2013.00555.x. Whyte, Martin K.; Wang, Feng; Cai, Yong (2015). “Challenging Myths about China’s One-Child Policy” (PDF). The China Journal.
I actually took the time to look at those two sources, and as far as I can tell they provide no support whatsoever for your claim that “It was [China’s] widespread education pre-1979 that reduced fertility.” The word ‘education’ occurs exactly once in the first article, and in a sentence that doesn’t make any claims about education reducing fertility. As for the second article, to the extent that it attributes the fertility decline to anything, it attributes it not to “education”, but to economic development (pp. 158-159):
The third fatal problem with the “400 million births prevented” claim is that it totally ignores the most significant source of fertility decline worldwide: economic development… China’s rapid economic development since 1980 deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the [fertility decline].
From “Challenging Myths about China’s One-Child Policy”
The third fatal problem with the “400 million births prevented” claim is that it totally ignores the most significant source of fertility decline worldwide: economic development. As the popular slogan has it, “economic development is the best contraceptive”. China’s dramatic post-1978 economic boom and the profound social changes unleashed by rising incomes and levels of education and rapid urbanization would have driven down birth rates even in the absence of state birth planning campaigns. Given the much more rapid pace of economic and social change in China than in any of the 16 comparison countries used in Figure 3, it is highly likely that the trajectory of birth rate decline in China after 1980 due to this source alone would have been steeper than the average for the 16 comparison countries, and therefore even closer to the observed birth rate changes, as shown in the bottom line in Figure 3. In sum, the claim that China’s one-child policy prevented 400 million births is entirely bogus.
There were two separate claims that I made
1) One child policy had no effect on China’s total population
Yong Cai is the best researcher on this question. He clearly says one-child policy had little impact of China’s total population. Amartya Sen discusses this issue, and comes to similar conclusion.
2) Regarding effects of education of fertility.
Yong Cai is not the expert I would consult.
Income, education, urbanization all correlate with declining fertility, and he points that out clearly.
It is well known in the human development community that in 1979 pre-reform China had much better health, education, fertility indicators than would be expected given its level of income. The question is why? The answers lie in their social policies at that time (under Mao), where an emphasis was given to basic education and basic healthcare (with barefoot doctors 12)
Its interesting to note that I got downvoted for giving excellent sources. While you got upvoted for reading the articles and commenting. Basically I am outgroup/outcaste in EA.
Moving on.
I have read extensively on the topic of demographic change. Let me start with context it was asserted that
“China …. one-child policy gave it a bigger demographic dividend.”
I replied that one child policy had no effect on China’s population. My sources were Yong Cai et all, Amartya Sen has extensively commented on demographics and in his books explicitly compares Kerala, Tamil Nadu, China etc… and does not find differences in demographic trajectories of those places.
One child policy had no effect on China’s total population.
Regarding education and fertility, Yong Cai says socioeconomic development played a role in his paper “China’s Below-Replacement Fertility: Government Policy or Socioeconomic Development?”
Improvement in education, especially for women, has been shown in other settings to have an important depressing effect on fertility (Axinn and Barber 2001; Bongaarts 2003; Jeffery and Jeffery 1998).
He concludes
Below-replacement fertility in China, as in other societies, is driven to a great extent by the increasingly global forces of social and economic development.
Yong Cai is a specialist demographer focused on China, and not on the link between education and fertility. The best research on the link between education and fertility comes from Wolfgang Lutz and his coauthors. Amartya Sen is worth reading too.
Its interesting to note that I got downvoted for giving excellent sources. While you got upvoted for reading the articles and commenting. Basically I am outgroup/outcaste in EA.
I’m not sure I’m the right person to comment on this, given that I’m one of the parties involved, but I’ll provide my perspective here anyway in case it is of any help or interest.
I don’t think you are characterizing this exchange or the reasons behind the pattern of votes accurately. Bruno asked you to provide a source in support of the following claim, which you made four comments above:
One child policy had no effect on China’s population size. It was their widespread education pre-1979 than reduced fertility.
In response to that request, you provided two sources. I looked at them and found that both failed to support the assertion that “It was [China’s] widespread education pre-1979 than reduced fertility”, and that one directly contradicted it.
I didn’t downvote your comment, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some people to downvote it in light of this revelation. In fact, on reflection I’m inclined to favor a norm of downvoting comments that incorrectly claim that a scholarly source supports some proposition, since such a norm would incentivize epistemic hygiene and reduce the incidence of information cascades. I do agree with you that ingroup/outgroup dynamics sometimes explain observed behavior in the EA community, but I don’t think this is one of those cases. As one datapoint confirming this, consider that a month or two ago, when I pointed out that someone had mischaracterized the main theses of a paper, that person’s comment was heavily downvoted, despite this user being a regular commenter and not someone (I think) generally perceived to be an “outsider”.
Moving to the object-level, in your recent comment you appear to have modified your original contention. Whereas before your stated that “widespread education” was the factor explaining China’s reduced fertility, now you state that education was one factor among many. Although this difference may seem minor, in the present context it is crucial, because both in comments to this post and elsewhere in the Forum you have argued that EAs should prioritize education over growth. Yet if both of these factors account for the fertility reduction in China, your position cannot derive any support from this Chinese experience.
Regarding voting. I have consistently been “controversial” when I have positive karma on a comment, I can see both +ve and -ve votes. While a few are not voted, and a lot of my comments get voted down.
You have 200 comments with 2000+ karma, I have 100 comments with 25 karma.
This is a pattern I see consistently.
I pointed out the context in which I made my comment.
China also opened up more, and the one-child policy gave it a bigger demographic dividend.
From reading Yong Cai and Amartya Sen etc.. its clear that one child policy had no effect on China’s population. First let’s agree on those facts.
Regarding education and fertility. I gave you a third paper by Yong Cai in which he acknowledges that education plays a role. Yong Cai is a China specialist not an expert on fertility and demography. As a scholar he reflects the thinking of his peers, and is cautious.
Wolfgang Lutz and others from IIASA and Wittgenstein center for demography research link between fertility and education. They are very clear that there is a strong link.
Whereas before your stated that “widespread education” was the factor explaining China’s reduced fertility, now you state that education was one factor among many.
I didn’t restate my position. I only quoted Yong Cai, it does not mean I agree completely with him.
I said as much when I wrote
Yong Cai is a specialist demographer focused on China, and not on the link between education and fertility.
You have to appreciate that this takes a lot of time, and a mental toll. If I dont give all my sources, it is because I have pondered this question for years and have read quite a few papers and books. I am not an academic to keep track and source everything.
lucy, given Linch’s admonition elsethread, I am taking a break from engaging with the content you present. I am not sure how best to phrase this, but I just wanted to say I empathize with your perception of being viewed as an outgroup/outcaste. I think that must feel quite bad. In spite of so far not agreeing a lot, I don’t want to contribute to you feeling that way, quite the contrary; I want everyone to feel welcomed here and in all EA spaces, and I apologize if my actions unwittingly had the opposite effect.
hey brunoparga, it is not one interaction that I find problematic. i am happy to be voted down when people respond back. it is those downvotes without a response that troubles me.
i like to interact and try to see others point of view, so its totally ok if you d’ont agree with me, say so, and explain your reasons. we may not agree at the end, but atleast we can try to understand each other.
I agree with your concerns. It’s hard enough as an American citizen to fix America’s broken immigration citizen, and like you said, it would be harder still to lobby these foreign countries for exactly the kinds of pro-growth policies that they are distancing themselves from. I’m half-Taiwanese, but I can barely speak Mandarin and have 1% of the cultural context I’d need to be an effective political advocate there.
But there’s a lot we can do from the vantage point of rich countries to benefit citizens of poor countries, like lobbying for more immigration. In terms of benefits to the global poor, open borders would probably trump any policy that developing countries could enact on their own. And it’s probably more tractable if we focus on the countries whose political climates already favor immigration.
I am ridiculously late to the party, and I must confess that I have not read the entire article.
My comment is about what I would expect to happen if EA decided to shift towards encouraging pro-growth policies. What I have to say is perhaps a refining of objection 5.4, politicization. It is how I perceive this would be instantiated. My perceptions are informed by being from a middle-income country (Brazil) and living in another (Chile), while having lived in the developed world (America) to know what it’s like.
The authors correctly acknowledge that this has a “politicized nature”. For the time being, the only way to enact pro-growth policies would be to influence those who hold political power in the target countries.
My concern about this is: people in such countries do not want these policies. They show that by how they think, how they act, how they vote, how they protest. Here in Chile, for example, people have been fighting tooth and nail against the policies that made the country the wealthiest, most educated one in South America, the only OECD member in the subcontinent. The content of the protests is explicitly against the pro-market policies that have prevailed for the last 40 years here. It is likely that an April referendum on a new constitution will pass, and replace the current basic law with another, much less growth-oriented.
It is worth noting that late-development countries where pro-growth policies have been enacted were often authoritarian at the time (South Korea, Taiwan, Chile), or still are (China, Singapore); even democracies like India and Indonesia are not shining beacons of civil liberties. Poor democracies, as a rule, do not consistently choose growth.
The text points out: “However, it is worth noting that EA funders are already involved in some highly politicised work, such as advocacy for increasing migration and criminal justice reform.” This is true, but there is one factor to consider, and I’ll put it in an intended humorous way, hoping that it will not be taken as hostility because there is zero intent of that: you are all a bunch of gringos! Obviously this does not matter to discern whether what you are saying or doing is right or wrong, but there is an exceedingly easy (and wrong) pattern to match against, that will raise objections instantly as soon as EA decides to try to influence our countries towards growth: you will be perceived as greedy gringos trying to exploit us for your own good.
And why do I keep using the second person, when I consider myself as much of an effective altruist as the next person? Because there are not nearly enough of us here to influence policy. I would love to know how to do it, but I find it highly unlikely. Even if we were more numerous, at our current size (just me here in Chile that I know of, about one or two dozen of people with at least a vague attachment to EA ideas in Brazil) we already cannot coordinate politically (I have no idea who most of the others voted for in 2018, and there was no talk of it whatsoever that I recall). And the same pattern I mentioned above can easily be reused to portray us as sellouts.
So, in short, the big question about EA developing the world is, in my opinion, how to make people want it.
You should first find out how to make people (justifiably) trust those policies.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re in some sort of stalemate here. A can say: “economics show that, unless you adopt pro-business policies – e.g., lower your taxes, slash labor and consumer regulations – investors will avoid this country.” And B replies: “social science shows that, unless you adopt redistributive policies – e.g., tax the rich, protect workers and consumers – people won’t support the government.” Of course, that’s even worse when A and B identify themselves as belonging to specific classes—then it’s more a political bargain than a debate on economics. I’d like to know more about how developed countries actually faced this conundrum – as far as I know, very badly: 30 years later, the 80’s neoliberal policies are still the core of debates. But the difference between developed and developing countries regarding social trust (and trust in the government) is truly remarkable; I wonder what’s the direction of causality here.
But should we make people want pro-growth policies? I’m rather sceptic that there is a positive expected outcome from influencing certain politics. In the end, founding a think tank that lobbies in favor of development policies is, in a way, to believe we know better than development country voters themselves what is best for them (assuming we’re talking about functional democracies).
Although that line of argument may be attractive for a few reasons already mentioned on the forum (because people don’t trust institutions, because they lack basic education, because their education is leftist-biased etc), I’d argue that’s a very strong and probably wrong caveat.
Given that growth economics is a controversial subject, for the sake of argument let’s assume that, after thorough research, we could be 80% sure that Party X would be better for GDP growth than Party Y. Are we really sure that voters don’t know what’s best for them with an 80% confidence interval?
Even if that were true, I’m not sure a pro-growth think tank would be the best course of action. Maybe voters were “wrong” because of malfunctioning elections or low voter turnout. In that case, I think it would be best to advocate in favor of better-functioning elections and increasing voter turnout.
In my opinion, if we disagree with voters about what’s best for them, it’s far more likely that we’re wrong. In a sense, that’s also the argument behind providing cash transfers—should be oblige people to spend money on what we think is right for them or simply give them the cash and trust they’ll know its best use?
This may be interpreted as a general critique of Politicisation, but I don’t think that applies to some of the other topics the EA community has been involved (animals can’t vote and I would argue this critique doesn’t apply to trade liberalization as well, but this isn’t the forum).
I was with you until the very end, then I got confused. Do you think it is fair to say that people don’t know what’s best for them when it comes to trade liberalization? (I do.)
I have way fewer qualms about saying that voters don’t know what’s best for them. Take, for example, South Africa. They use a pretty darn good voting system—single-ballot closed-list proportional representation with half the seats coming from province-level lists and the other half from nationwide lists—and I think the conduct of the elections themselves is decently well-organized; turnout has been dropping recently, but it was a whopping 89.3% in 1999.
I (cherry-)picked that one election because it brought Thabo Mbeki to the Presidency. He didn’t believe HIV caused AIDS; he thought AIDS is caused by vitamin deficiencies. He oriented the country’s policy based on that belief. Southern Africa is one of the areas with the highest incidence of the disease in the world. So, yeah, in that particular case the 66.5% of South Africans who voted for him clearly did not know what was best for them.
Also, it could be that we know with only 80% confidence what the best policies are, but we know with a much higher certainty that some policies (like subsidizing gas until it costs less than USD 0.05 a liter, like Hugo Chavez did) are completely wrong. Yet people still vote for them.
So yes, I am fairly confident that by and large people here in poor countries do not want growth, or that they do not want to avoid the policies that we know are harmful to growth.
You could point out that I cherry picked that one election, and that is true. But I think that, generally speaking, elections at least here in Latin America are broadly representative of people’s will, or as much as is possible in a presidential system (I think parliamentarianism is stricly better). AFAIK most countries use proportional representation rather than single-member districts, which are a big cause of dysfunctional-ness in e.g. US politics. Basically, we’re not stuck in the same inadequate equilibria as the US is. And turnout in, say, Brazil is pretty high, because voting is mandatory.
So, for democracies here in Latin America, I’d be fairly confident on “people don’t get pro-growth policies because they choose not to” over “people would want pro-growth policies but fail to get them because of poor election methods or low turnout”. (The low turnout hypothesis would also be fishy in that it would suggest a correlation between turning out to vote and being against growth; I’d find that correlation surprising if it existed. If there was any meaningful correlation, I’d expect it to go in the other direction.)
I’m way less confident in African elections. Some countries, like Ghana and South Africa, conduct their elections pretty well, I believe, but that’s probably not the norm in the continent. Most countries have very little experience with democracy (the 1999 election I mentioned was only the second one). Then again, some cultures in Africa have traits like:
the belief that albino body parts are somehow good for disease;
female genital mutilation;
insistence on contact with bodies of Ebola victims.
Things like this, as well as political views that are clearly a majority in the continent (e.g. non-acceptance of homosexuality, which is still illegal in nearly 2⁄3 of African countries) give me substantial confidence that yeah, they don’t know what’s best for their countries.
(I’m not saying should try to make them want growth; what I am saying is that, if the article is right that that’s what EAs should focus on, then we need to keep that in mind.)
Thanks for this, I think you make a lot of good points here that anyone carrying out this research would need to think about carefully.
Chile was ahead of much of South America in 1950, I wouldn’t give credit solely to the last 40 years of policies. Data for Education, Income, Life Expectancy only Cuba was ahead in terms of both Income and Education (by a little bit) every other country was behind including Brazil
I would not put Singapore in the same bucket as China, overall agree that those countries were authoritarian, however plenty of other authoritarian countries did far worse. South Africa is one example. All of those countries in your list had universal basic education before economic growth, was that the driver in improvements in income?
Indonesia had a much more authoritarian history than India. India’s first Prime Minister prioritized industrialization calling dams and heavy industry as temples of modern india. Kerala a state in India (followed by Tamil Nadu later) prioritized basic education and healthcare which formed the Kerala Model and now ranks at the top of Indian state by HDI
They do want it, but first to evaluate “pro-growth” arguments they need basic education.
Lucy, thank you for your comment, even though I disagree with most of it :)
AFAIK, Chile crumbled in the 1970s. Electing Socialist Salvador Allende is an example of what I mean by “choosing anti-growth policies”; the first half of the Pinochet dictatorship didn’t help with growth (and, obviously, was a disaster for human rights).
I agree they’re quite different, but the point is that in both countries the leadership can just outright decide to shift their policies with little in the way of popular resistance.
Yes, I am not claiming that being authoritarian is sufficient, it clearly isn’t. It is not necessary either, but that seems to have helped a whole lot in the cases I mentioned. Even Brazil didn’t have a proper central bank until the 1964 military coup.
Notice that me pointing out authoritarianism helped with pro-growth policies is not in any way an endorsement of these authoritarian regimes.
India’s pre-1990s policies were not pro-growth, they were explicitly socialist. Industrialization per se is not inherently a pro-growth policy; countries need to be mindful of their comparative advantages. Nehru imposed all sorts of weird, distorting subsidies and price controls on things like coal and transportation. It was Manmohan Singh who implemented India’s first pro-growth policies, first as Finance Minister then as Prime Minister.
That depends on the kind of education. The way I see it, subjects that would help would be reading, math, science, economics. Policies that claim for “more education”, in Brazil at least, tend to emphasize a completely different skillset: far leftist-biased history, far leftist-biased geography, far leftist-biased sociology, far leftist-biased philosophy, arts and culture (there’s this perception that “more culture” is some sort of panacea), and “critical thinking”, which is usually code for “opposing pro-growth policies”. So getting more of this type of education in Brazil would be *worse* for growth.
Chile ranks highest in Latin America in the PISA international evaluation, and these most-educated-people completely thrashed their own metro system last year while protesting against fare hikes; a good deal of the stations are still unusable, especially in the poorest parts of Santiago, even 3.5 months after the rampage.
I do agree math & science are really wanting in the 3rd world, that they’re more fundamental for growth, and that we should focus on them. However, I disagree with the diagnosis; I believe the reason students are comparatively worse in hard sciences is, well, that they’re relatively harder—they require training and competence, from students AND teachers. If the problem were that we implemented leftist pro-culture policies, instead of improve hard sciences learning, we should at least observe improvements in some other capabilities—e.g., they should be able to read, interpret, and expose arguments on why, e.g., everything bad was caused by colonialism, patriarchy, etc.
I think we have a more complex inadequate equilibria: bad teachers in unions defending their interests, students from terrible backgrounds, talented people avoiding teaching (if you know calculus, why would you want to try to teach poor kids for a low salary?), and, of course, governments focused on whatever will win votes in the next election.
I do agree that any proposal on changing educational policies will meet a backlash, espacially from humanities, and that it will often carry a leftist taste—but we shouldn’t focus on this backlash, that’s not the cause of illiteracy, nor innumeracy. When we frame the issue as “the problem is that education is dominated by marxist thinking”, we’re just unnecessarily politicising it.
I’m not sure I get what the core of the disagreement is. Perhaps you could try expressing to me what your understanding of my view is, to clarify the comparison with yours? In general I think I agree with most of your comment.
Regarding Chile, Amartya Sen in his book Hunger and Public Action writes about it
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198283652.001.0001/acprof-9780198283652-chapter-10
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198283652.001.0001/acprof-9780198283652-chapter-12
life expectancy in Chile is on par with US, my interest about Chile would be more around how they have same life expectancy as US with less money.
Sure you can call them socialist, although I don’t like labels. Under Nehru basic education was neglected, as was basic healthcare. So does the label fit? I don’t want to argue or think about labels, it is just a waste of time. I am for universal basic education, and universal basic healthcare both of which were done better by China than India, or any “developed” country for that matter with their universal free public schooling systems.
Among countries that you gave as examples (South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore) had universal basic education provided by the government, I am not sure of Chile. Education is a necessary but not sufficient condition for economic growth.
My point about Nehru and industrialization was that there was a desire for economic growth, whether the right policies were followed is a different question.
It is not just the policies of Singh that made the difference, India had a large number of educated people by the year 1990 (along with enormous illiteracy). India and China opened up 10 years from each other, but India is 20-30 years behind China. This distance is mirrored in the education levels of China vs India, with China being ahead of India pre-1980 by 20-30 years.
Regarding Brazil, it is less educated than Chile or US, and its life expectancy is roughly 4 years behind both countries. Even today 18% of brazil’s kids have 6 years of schooling or less. In Chile that number is less than 2%
Basic Education makes a difference.
I think the outlier there is the US, not Chile.
I’m just going by India’s self-identification.
I don’t know enough to comment on this.
I find this particular label useful because it seems to anticorrelate fairly well with pro-growth policies, especially as long as the system hasn’t obviously failed yet (e.g. even Venezuela is somewhat liberalizing now).
Could I please have a source on China being that good, especially pre-Deng Xiaoping’s reforms? Does “better healthcare” include the several dozen million deaths in the Great Leap Ahead and other assorted atrocities? One has to keep in mind present-day China handpicks its best provinces to take part on PISA so the comparison is not apples to apples. Furthermore, this claim of Chinese citizens being particularly well-educated seems incongruous with the one about education being necessary to critcially evaluate public policy, since I’d expect Chinese education to be a total brainwash in favor of the Party.
Was there such desire? If that is the case, why were the right policies not followed? It is not like late 1940s economists couldn’t predict that Nehru’s policies would have pretty terrible results.
China also opened up more, and the one-child policy gave it a bigger demographic dividend. This by itself might be able to explain the growth difference (especially GDP per capita).
That does not explain the riots here in Chile. In fact, it does sound like you think education is a panacea. What do you think of North Korean education? Cuban? Costa Rican?
The life expectancy of China has consistently gone up since 1960[1] (where the World Bank data starts).
There is a larger change, in absolute terms, from 1960 to 1980 (roughly when the reforms seriously started) than from 1980 to 2017. The increase is from 44.3 in 1960 to 66.4 in 1979, which is much larger than the rest of the world(52.6 to 62.6). To put it in perspective, if you’re an average[2] Chinese person, it means that your life expectancy rose ~ as rapidly as your age for 20 full years, so if the curve continued you’d never die.
Of course, this is partially because the low-hanging fruits are plucked first because they are easier to pluck, but nonetheless it’s substantive evidence that public health before the reforms must have done something right.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=CN
[2] Somewhat misleading to use the average since some of the advances came from infant mortality, but still.
Thanks Linch. You are right.
Amartya Sen compared China and India 30 years ago in his book Hunger and Public Action, it is worth reading today after all these years.
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198283652.001.0001/acprof-9780198283652-chapter-11
I enjoyed reading Development as Freedom by Sen in undergrad. It was an interesting read for me to get an understanding of non-consequentialist approaches to development, though I still think he underestimated the value of flow-through effects from GDP/scientific progress.
I consider Hunger and Public Action as one of Sen’s best books, it is available as open access online here
Thank you, Linch. My question was more focused on the education part than the health part, although I agree I should have made that clearer. The information you provided is still good to know, though—and impressive indeed.
On a meta-level, in general I think your conversation with lucy is overly acrimonious, and it would be helpful to identify clear cruxes, have more of a scout’s mindset, etc.
My read of the situation is that you (and other EAs upvoting or downvoting content) have better global priors, but lucy has more domain knowledge in the specific areas they chose to talk about.
I do understand that it’s very frustrating for you to be in a developing country and constantly see people vote against their economic best interests, so I understand a need to vent, especially in a “safe space” of a pro-growth forum like this one.
However, lucy likely also feels frustrated about saying what they believe to be true things (or at least well-established beliefs in the field) and getting what they may perceive to be unjustifiably attacked by people who have different politics or epistemic worldviews.
My personal suggestion is to have a stronger “collaborative truth-seeking attitude” and engage more respectfully, though I understand if either you or lucy aren’t up for it, and would rather tap out.
Thank you for your admonition, Linch. I’d point out I wouldn’t like to be grouped together with people up- or downvoting lucy; I haven’t voted on their comments except but one each way. As for the actual content of the conversation, this is not how I wanted it to be perceived; I wonder if you could help me identify what went wrong at a more detailed level, in private. I know about identifying clear cruxes and having a scout’s mindset, I endorse collaborative truth-seeking, yet here I failed to implement these things and it is not clear to me why; I could use help with that.
(I talked more with brunoparga over PM).
For onlookers, I want to say I really appreciate bruno’s top-level comment and that I have a lot of respect for bruno’s contributions, both here and elsewhere. The comment I made two levels up was probably stronger than warranted and I really appreciate bruno taking it in stride, etc.
Great comment—strong upvote! :)
Apologies for the delayed response. I was surprised at not finding a single source (after several minutes of searching) that plotted literacy rates across time, however:
http://schugurensky.faculty.asu.edu/moments/1949china.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271336/literacy-in-china/
At least naively, this suggests a ~60% absolute change in literacy rates from 1949-~1980, which is higher than in the next 40 years (since you cannot go above 100%).
I think the change here actually understates the impact of the first 30 years, since there’s an obvious delay between the implementation of a schooling system and the adult literacy rate (plus at least naively, we would expect the Cultural Revolution to have wiped out some of the progress).
One thing to flag with cobbling sources together is that there’s a risk of using different (implicit or explicit) operationalizations, so the exact number can’t be relied upon as much.
However, I think it’s significantly more likely than not that under most reasonable operationalizations of adult literacy, the first 30 years of China under CCP rule was more influential than the next 40.
Thanks Linch, a better indicator than adult literacy is youth literacy.
In China 1950, for kids aged 15-19 21.86% of boys had no education, for girls 49.9% had no education.
By 1980 for kids 15-19 1.32% of boys and 3.88% of girls had no education. This is a dramatic improvement.
the cultural revolution only stalled increase in education beyond 9th grade, so it had very little effect on literacy rates
The nation with highest life expectancy is Japan at 84 years, Chile, USA and every “developed” country is 75+ I would say all of them are on par
Not useful. North Korea is Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, I guess republicans and democrats in USA should be thrilled. China is communist etc.. British were bringing civilization to the world etc...
Ouch. My mistake. I should have written clearer. China outshined India in both education and healthcare. Given its history pre-independence it did very well in terms of health and education w.r.t. to “developed” countries. It did not cross rich nations, but did MUCH better than expected for a poor country. My observation was simply that “developed” countries had free public schooling (socialist schooling)
Yes I am fully aware of China. I will simply quote Sen
a really sad thought for 2 reasons. very few people know about the tragedy in India. Secondly the deaths are continuing today preventable deaths are around 4 million a year worldwide.
Partly people really had no idea. They thought Import substitution industrialization was the answer. Secondly after capitalist Britain ruled (and ruined India) for 200 years would any country want to follow the system of Britain? Which economists should be followed? British ones? How about Dr. Ambedkar’s policies? he is an economist.
One child policy had no effect on China’s population size. It was their widespread education pre-1979 than reduced fertility.
The riots are a non-issue in the big scheme of things. Yes education is the fundamental factor for human well being. I have no idea about north korean education, cuban is very ideological I assume, no idea about Costa Rica, I assume it is similar to say Mexico.
Anyway it’s not what is taught in school that is important. It is the quantum jump that comes with being able to read, write, reason, interpret, understand the world that is important. As compared to a totally illiterate person.
If pretty much all developed countries have a similar life expectancy (apart from Japan), and the USA is quite significantly richer, than yes, it is the US that’s the outlier, not Chile.
I was going by India’s *socialist* self-identification. There’s reason to dispute e.g. North Korea’s democratic credentials. India said it was socialist, Venezuela still does (China appends the “with Chinese characteristics” euphemism/tautology, of course), Denmark doesn’t. I think it is reasonable to follow *that* self-identification, because I think the only people who would dispute that, say, Venezuela deserves the label are socialists who are sour about their ideology collapsing yet another country, and that is just not reasonable.
I dispute that equivalence.
The best ones.
I would like an *excellent* source on that claim.
If changing the Constitution is a non-issue, what counts as an issue to you?
What exactly do you *mean* by education here?
That much more than Chinese one? Or is it okay for it to be ideological?
As far as I know, it is excellent… yet the country is still poor.
Is your claim that, regardless of what is taught in school, as long as someone is not illiterate, they can adequately assess which policies are more conducive to growth and which ones are bad? Is this what you’re saying?
regarding one child policy of china
Feng, Wang; Yong, Cai; Gu, Baochang (2012). “Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China’s One-Child Policy?” (PDF). Population and Development Review. 38: 115–29. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2013.00555.x.
Whyte, Martin K.; Wang, Feng; Cai, Yong (2015). “Challenging Myths about China’s One-Child Policy” (PDF). The China Journal.
+ read demographic research from http://www.wittgensteincentre.org/en/index.htm
I actually took the time to look at those two sources, and as far as I can tell they provide no support whatsoever for your claim that “It was [China’s] widespread education pre-1979 that reduced fertility.” The word ‘education’ occurs exactly once in the first article, and in a sentence that doesn’t make any claims about education reducing fertility. As for the second article, to the extent that it attributes the fertility decline to anything, it attributes it not to “education”, but to economic development (pp. 158-159):
From “Challenging Myths about China’s One-Child Policy”
There were two separate claims that I made
1) One child policy had no effect on China’s total population
Yong Cai is the best researcher on this question. He clearly says one-child policy had little impact of China’s total population. Amartya Sen discusses this issue, and comes to similar conclusion.
2) Regarding effects of education of fertility.
Yong Cai is not the expert I would consult.
Income, education, urbanization all correlate with declining fertility, and he points that out clearly.
It is well known in the human development community that in 1979 pre-reform China had much better health, education, fertility indicators than would be expected given its level of income. The question is why? The answers lie in their social policies at that time (under Mao), where an emphasis was given to basic education and basic healthcare (with barefoot doctors 1 2)
I like Amartya Sen’s discussion on China best
Its interesting to note that I got downvoted for giving excellent sources. While you got upvoted for reading the articles and commenting. Basically I am outgroup/outcaste in EA.
Moving on.
I have read extensively on the topic of demographic change. Let me start with context it was asserted that
“China …. one-child policy gave it a bigger demographic dividend.”
I replied that one child policy had no effect on China’s population. My sources were Yong Cai et all, Amartya Sen has extensively commented on demographics and in his books explicitly compares Kerala, Tamil Nadu, China etc… and does not find differences in demographic trajectories of those places.
One child policy had no effect on China’s total population.
Regarding education and fertility, Yong Cai says socioeconomic development played a role in his paper “China’s Below-Replacement Fertility: Government Policy or Socioeconomic Development?”
He concludes
Yong Cai is a specialist demographer focused on China, and not on the link between education and fertility. The best research on the link between education and fertility comes from Wolfgang Lutz and his coauthors. Amartya Sen is worth reading too.
Is the Demographic Dividend an Education Dividend?
I’m not sure I’m the right person to comment on this, given that I’m one of the parties involved, but I’ll provide my perspective here anyway in case it is of any help or interest.
I don’t think you are characterizing this exchange or the reasons behind the pattern of votes accurately. Bruno asked you to provide a source in support of the following claim, which you made four comments above:
In response to that request, you provided two sources. I looked at them and found that both failed to support the assertion that “It was [China’s] widespread education pre-1979 than reduced fertility”, and that one directly contradicted it.
I didn’t downvote your comment, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some people to downvote it in light of this revelation. In fact, on reflection I’m inclined to favor a norm of downvoting comments that incorrectly claim that a scholarly source supports some proposition, since such a norm would incentivize epistemic hygiene and reduce the incidence of information cascades. I do agree with you that ingroup/outgroup dynamics sometimes explain observed behavior in the EA community, but I don’t think this is one of those cases. As one datapoint confirming this, consider that a month or two ago, when I pointed out that someone had mischaracterized the main theses of a paper, that person’s comment was heavily downvoted, despite this user being a regular commenter and not someone (I think) generally perceived to be an “outsider”.
Moving to the object-level, in your recent comment you appear to have modified your original contention. Whereas before your stated that “widespread education” was the factor explaining China’s reduced fertility, now you state that education was one factor among many. Although this difference may seem minor, in the present context it is crucial, because both in comments to this post and elsewhere in the Forum you have argued that EAs should prioritize education over growth. Yet if both of these factors account for the fertility reduction in China, your position cannot derive any support from this Chinese experience.
Regarding voting. I have consistently been “controversial” when I have positive karma on a comment, I can see both +ve and -ve votes. While a few are not voted, and a lot of my comments get voted down.
You have 200 comments with 2000+ karma, I have 100 comments with 25 karma.
This is a pattern I see consistently.
I pointed out the context in which I made my comment.
From reading Yong Cai and Amartya Sen etc.. its clear that one child policy had no effect on China’s population. First let’s agree on those facts.
Regarding education and fertility. I gave you a third paper by Yong Cai in which he acknowledges that education plays a role. Yong Cai is a China specialist not an expert on fertility and demography. As a scholar he reflects the thinking of his peers, and is cautious.
Wolfgang Lutz and others from IIASA and Wittgenstein center for demography research link between fertility and education. They are very clear that there is a strong link.
I didn’t restate my position. I only quoted Yong Cai, it does not mean I agree completely with him.
I said as much when I wrote
You have to appreciate that this takes a lot of time, and a mental toll. If I dont give all my sources, it is because I have pondered this question for years and have read quite a few papers and books. I am not an academic to keep track and source everything.
lucy, given Linch’s admonition elsethread, I am taking a break from engaging with the content you present. I am not sure how best to phrase this, but I just wanted to say I empathize with your perception of being viewed as an outgroup/outcaste. I think that must feel quite bad. In spite of so far not agreeing a lot, I don’t want to contribute to you feeling that way, quite the contrary; I want everyone to feel welcomed here and in all EA spaces, and I apologize if my actions unwittingly had the opposite effect.
hey brunoparga, it is not one interaction that I find problematic. i am happy to be voted down when people respond back. it is those downvotes without a response that troubles me.
i like to interact and try to see others point of view, so its totally ok if you d’ont agree with me, say so, and explain your reasons. we may not agree at the end, but atleast we can try to understand each other.
I agree with your concerns. It’s hard enough as an American citizen to fix America’s broken immigration citizen, and like you said, it would be harder still to lobby these foreign countries for exactly the kinds of pro-growth policies that they are distancing themselves from. I’m half-Taiwanese, but I can barely speak Mandarin and have 1% of the cultural context I’d need to be an effective political advocate there.
But there’s a lot we can do from the vantage point of rich countries to benefit citizens of poor countries, like lobbying for more immigration. In terms of benefits to the global poor, open borders would probably trump any policy that developing countries could enact on their own. And it’s probably more tractable if we focus on the countries whose political climates already favor immigration.