I don’t understand at all why this would motivate less focus on infant mortality: fixing that is an extremely cheap way to improve human capacity!
This sounds plausible, but not obvious, to me. If your society has a sharply limited amount of resources to invest in the next generation, it isn’t clear to me that maximizing the number of members in that generation would be the best “way to improve human capacity” in that society. One could argue that with somewhat fewer kids, the society could provide better nutrition, education, health care, and other inputs that are rather important to adult capacity and flourishing.
To be clear, I am a strong supporter of life-saving interventions and am not advocating for a move away from these. I just think they are harder to justify on improving-capacity grounds than on the grounds usually provided for them.
One could argue that with somewhat fewer kids, the society could provide better nutrition, education, health care, and other inputs that are rather important to adult capacity and flourishing.
I think that’s an argument worth having. After all, if the claim were true then I think that really would justify shifting attention away from infant mortality reduction and towards these “other inputs” for promoting human flourishing. (But I’m skeptical that the claim is true, at least on currently relevant margins in most places.)
This sounds plausible, but not obvious, to me. If your society has a sharply limited amount of resources to invest in the next generation, it isn’t clear to me that maximizing the number of members in that generation would be the best “way to improve human capacity” in that society. One could argue that with somewhat fewer kids, the society could provide better nutrition, education, health care, and other inputs that are rather important to adult capacity and flourishing.
To be clear, I am a strong supporter of life-saving interventions and am not advocating for a move away from these. I just think they are harder to justify on improving-capacity grounds than on the grounds usually provided for them.
I think that’s an argument worth having. After all, if the claim were true then I think that really would justify shifting attention away from infant mortality reduction and towards these “other inputs” for promoting human flourishing. (But I’m skeptical that the claim is true, at least on currently relevant margins in most places.)