You’d either want to stop focusing on infant mortality, or start interventions to increase fertility. (Depending on whether population growth is a priority.)
I’m not sure I buy this disjunctive claim. Many people over humanity’s history have worked on reducing infant mortality (in technology, in policy, in direct aid, and in direct actions that prevent their own children/relatives’ children from dying). While some people worked on this because they primarily intrinsically value reducing infant mortality, I think many others were inspired by the indirect effects. And taking the long view, reducing infant mortality clearly had long-run benefits that are different from (and likely better than) equivalent levels of population growth while keeping infant mortality rates constant.
I agree reductions in infant mortality likely have better long-run effects on capacity growth than equivalent levels of population growth while keeping infant mortality rates constant, which could mean that you still want to focus on infant mortality while not prioritizing increasing fertility.
I would just be surprised if the decision from the global capacity growth perspective ended up being “continue putting tons of resources into reducing infant mortality, but not much into increasing fertility” (which I understand to be the status quo for GHD), because:
Probably the dominant consideration for importance is how good / bad it is to grow the population, and it is unlikely that the differential effects from reducing infant mortality vs increasing fertility end up changing the decision
Probably it is easier / cheaper to increase fertility than to reduce infant mortality, because very little effort has been put into increasing fertility (to my knowledge)
That said, it’s been many years since I closely followed the GHD space, and I could easily be wrong about a lot of this.
I’m not sure I buy this disjunctive claim. Many people over humanity’s history have worked on reducing infant mortality (in technology, in policy, in direct aid, and in direct actions that prevent their own children/relatives’ children from dying). While some people worked on this because they primarily intrinsically value reducing infant mortality, I think many others were inspired by the indirect effects. And taking the long view, reducing infant mortality clearly had long-run benefits that are different from (and likely better than) equivalent levels of population growth while keeping infant mortality rates constant.
I agree reductions in infant mortality likely have better long-run effects on capacity growth than equivalent levels of population growth while keeping infant mortality rates constant, which could mean that you still want to focus on infant mortality while not prioritizing increasing fertility.
I would just be surprised if the decision from the global capacity growth perspective ended up being “continue putting tons of resources into reducing infant mortality, but not much into increasing fertility” (which I understand to be the status quo for GHD), because:
Probably the dominant consideration for importance is how good / bad it is to grow the population, and it is unlikely that the differential effects from reducing infant mortality vs increasing fertility end up changing the decision
Probably it is easier / cheaper to increase fertility than to reduce infant mortality, because very little effort has been put into increasing fertility (to my knowledge)
That said, it’s been many years since I closely followed the GHD space, and I could easily be wrong about a lot of this.