As you develop this methodology further, I think it’s important that you account for other moral views, most notably totalism. As you’re aware, totalism is a popular view (especially in EA) and, depending on how we ought to respond to moral uncertainty, we might think that totalism (or something similar) dominates our decision calculus when acting under moral uncertainty (Greaves and Ord 2017). I think it would be valuable to know what a similar totalist analysis yields.
I agree it’s important to see the value of our actions is sensitive to concerns about population ethics, especially in this case where it seems it could make such a difference. A few comments.
First, it’s worth noting all views of population ethics will be somewhat sensitive to the issue of how saving lives affects total population size. This is because whether there are more or fewer people now has, arguably, an impact on the well-being of everyone else (present and future). Many people seem to think the Earth is overpopulated, in the sense that adding people now is overall worse. There are a few different ways of thinking about this but one general practical implication is that the worse it is to add people (because you want a smaller population) the worse it will also be to save lives. See Greaves (2015) analysis and Plant (2019, chapter 2) which is an extension of Greaves’ paper.
Second, I agree that if you’re thinking about how mortality rates affect fertility, this will be particularly important on totalism in this context, because totalism gives so much weight to creating new lives, although it will apply to other views of population ethics too.
Third, when trying to understand what the “lives saved:births averted” ratio is, what’s relevant is not just mortality or fertility rates by themselves, but the combination of them. If parents are trying to have a set number of children (survive to adulthood) then the effects of reducing mortality might not change the total number of future people much, because parents adjust fertility. I think this is a topic for further work and I don’t claim expertise on the population dynamics in any particular context.
Agreed. I didn’t mean to imply that totalism is the only view sensitive to the mortality-fertility relationship—just that the results could be fairly different on totalism and that it’s especially important to see the results on totalism and that it makes sense to look at totalism before other population ethical views not yet considered. Exploring other population ethical views would be good too!
If parents are trying to have a set number of children (survive to adulthood) then the effects of reducing mortality might not change the total number of future people much, because parents adjust fertility
I think my concern here was that the post suggested that saving lives might not be very valuable on totalism due to a high fertility adjustment:
A report writtenfor GiveWell estimated that in some areas where it recommends charities the number of births averted per life saved is as large as 1:1, a ratio at which population size and growth are left effectively unchanged by saving lives.[45] For totalists, the value of saving lives in a 1:1 context would be very small (compared to one where there was no fertility reduction) as the value of saving one life is ‘negated’ by the disvalue of causing one less life to be created.
Roodman’s report (if I recall correctly) suggested that this likely happens to a lower degree in areas where infant mortality is high (i.e. parents adjust fertility less in high infant mortality settings) so saving lives in these settings is plausibly still very valuable according to totalism.
Okay, we’re on the same page on all of this. :) A further specific empirical project would involve trying to understand population dynamics in the locations EAs are considering.
On totalism and births averted per life saved
I agree it’s important to see the value of our actions is sensitive to concerns about population ethics, especially in this case where it seems it could make such a difference. A few comments.
First, it’s worth noting all views of population ethics will be somewhat sensitive to the issue of how saving lives affects total population size. This is because whether there are more or fewer people now has, arguably, an impact on the well-being of everyone else (present and future). Many people seem to think the Earth is overpopulated, in the sense that adding people now is overall worse. There are a few different ways of thinking about this but one general practical implication is that the worse it is to add people (because you want a smaller population) the worse it will also be to save lives. See Greaves (2015) analysis and Plant (2019, chapter 2) which is an extension of Greaves’ paper.
Second, I agree that if you’re thinking about how mortality rates affect fertility, this will be particularly important on totalism in this context, because totalism gives so much weight to creating new lives, although it will apply to other views of population ethics too.
Third, when trying to understand what the “lives saved:births averted” ratio is, what’s relevant is not just mortality or fertility rates by themselves, but the combination of them. If parents are trying to have a set number of children (survive to adulthood) then the effects of reducing mortality might not change the total number of future people much, because parents adjust fertility. I think this is a topic for further work and I don’t claim expertise on the population dynamics in any particular context.
Agreed. I didn’t mean to imply that totalism is the only view sensitive to the mortality-fertility relationship—just that the results could be fairly different on totalism and that it’s especially important to see the results on totalism and that it makes sense to look at totalism before other population ethical views not yet considered. Exploring other population ethical views would be good too!
I think my concern here was that the post suggested that saving lives might not be very valuable on totalism due to a high fertility adjustment:
Roodman’s report (if I recall correctly) suggested that this likely happens to a lower degree in areas where infant mortality is high (i.e. parents adjust fertility less in high infant mortality settings) so saving lives in these settings is plausibly still very valuable according to totalism.
Okay, we’re on the same page on all of this. :) A further specific empirical project would involve trying to understand population dynamics in the locations EAs are considering.
Yep, agreed!