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Comment by dmlorenzetti | Hacker News Reader

When Bill Gates' wife began pushing him to work on issues of third-world health, this was more or less his argument against it. She dug up the statistics to show that this idea, while intuitive, is not supported by fact. As health improves-- and in particular as child mortality goes down-- birth rates fall accordingly.

As we all know, Gates got on board, and now funds a lot of health research and on-the-ground initiatives.

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As I understand it, Gates funds health related research, e.g. clean drinking water or malaria. Your parent was discussing the simple provision of free food.

yeah, no bags of rice, AFAIK

Health generally improves with the underlying economy, not because of charity. The underlying economy is going to correlate with damn near other statistic one way or another.

More credibly, the "War on Poverty" was an abject failure in every way.

Can you source your information on the abject failure of the "War on Poverty"in every way? I'm sure you were speaking in hyperbole so I'm not expecting that literally this be shown to be a failure in every way.

The term "War on Poverty" in the U.S. specifically refers to initiatives started by the Johnson administration. Do you refer this or some other war on poverty?

The argument is not that "charity improves healthcare" (though in some specific cases it does, locally), it's that since birth rates tend to fall, the claim that "saving a child will only increase the number of starving people in the future" doesn't hold.

I'm afraid that the difference it makes when we decreased infant mortality in a region, is the difference between having 8 children and having 5 children.

The problem is one of culture, education, and relative-wealth (and also whatever traits are infuenced by DNA). Everything else stems from that.

Sub-Sahara population has seen a decrease in infant mortality and at the same time has gone from 250M to 850M people in 30 years.

It's blowing up and I'm also afraid that the cause of all that is foreign intervention and artificial aid. In 2050 there will be 2 Billion people there. Who's going to help feed the hungry then?

More credibly, the "War on Poverty" couldn't compete with the "War on the War on Poverty".

It's really simple. Imagine that you have no social security in your old age. Your children, who are very likely to die from malnutrition, are your ONLY resource. In the short term (generationally) it makes sense to try to have as many children as possible. That way maybe someone will still be alive to take care of you.

If you don't feel that pressure, there isn't that population explosion.

If you are referring to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, you are wrong. It was a significant success and brought poverty rates down to the lowest levels the US had seen before or has seen since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty

Of course we have more poverty now but keep in mind that most laws and policies associated with the war on poverty were stopped or reversed somehow or other.

Melinda Gates seems to support the idea of birth control in Africa.

http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_gates_let_s_put_birth_contr...

Edits: She doesn't want it for population control.

By empowering women to decide whether or not they want to have children, it will still significantly reduce the birth rate.

I'm weary of these statistics as one can manipulate data to suit one's purpose. Source please?

I would have liked to provide the source, but it was a New Yorker article that I read in the print edition.

Here's an "abstract" of the article, which hints at my synopsis: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/24/051024fa_fact_sp...

I think you mean wary? Here you can see that as infant mortality increases, population growth is nearly steady or even increases slightly. http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly... (Note the log scale on the vertical axis.) You can "scrub" backward and forward in time with the slider at the bottom.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_good_news_of_the_d...

That video does a very good job of explaining this. As child mortality decreases, family size goes down. I'm sure the data is manipulated to suit someone's purposes, but all seems reasonable to me...

I'd recommend watching all the TED talks by Hans Rosling, they are pretty awesome and eye opening, in particular these:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_shows_the_best...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_reveals_new_in...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_at_state.html

Play with the raw data as you like at Gapminder.org.

For example, here is a graph I created of infant mortality vs children per woman: http://www.bit.ly/QTPNBk (starts at 1900, press play to see changes to current)

Note that each axis has a small 'various sources' button under it that will cite specific sources.

You may also enjoy Hans Rosling's TED Talk on global population growth, as he gets into the details pretty thoroughly. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_...

Do some Googling. My grandparents were all born in Ireland from 1905-1920. My father's father was one of 6 children, my mother's mother 1 of 13. All families lost at least two children each that I'm aware of -- stillbirths were often kept secret.

The point is, when you have incredibly poor country, excessive influence of religion, poor health and a high child mortality rate, you have more children, both planned and unplanned.

I suspect that excessive influence of religion led to all those other problems.

Excessive influence of religion leads to poverty, poor health, and a high child mortality rate? Do you have any sources to back this besides a general feeling that religion is "bad"?

TED Talk Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset:

Religion has very little to do with the number of babies per woman. All the religions in the world are fully [able] to maintain their values and adapt to this new world. </quote> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_at_state.html

Yes religions can adapt, but of course they don't want to and needn't, so Rosling's reasoning isn't convincing. Utah has the highest birth rate in the US. I doubt that has very little to do with Mormonism.

Have you been to Utah? There isn't much else to do there...

It's not based on a general feeling. It's based on the fact that resources are limited. Any religion that successfully promotes "be fruitful and multiply" will certainly bump against that limit eventually. I can only suspect in any particular case because something else besides religion could be the main contributor to the bad things.

But what if child mortality is up mainly because of high birth rates? When their religion/culture calls for having as many kids as possible, it causes problems that lead to high child mortality. It's very difficult to change religion/culture.

This talk by Hans Rosling makes a pretty reasonable case for decoupling the notion of religion and birth rates.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_religions_and_...

Does he explain away the correlation in Utah? It seemed a safe bet that Utah has the US's highest birth rate, given Mormonism there. A search confirmed it. (Sorry I'm lazy on video sources.)

No he doesn't mention it from what I recall. The data discussed is broader (and more longitudinal) than that trend.

Personally I'd guess the birth rate there is a direct result of the church's push for more children, but I don't really know.

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