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Comment by seeingfurther | Hacker News Reader

What Bill and Melinda are doing is amazing and quite admirable. My only question after reading this is... Shouldn't there also be some focus on lowering birth rates in poor areas? Am I missing something, or wouldn't that go hand in hand toward achieving their goals?

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Birth rates decline as overall health and living standards increase. This is an empirical relationship (we've observed it but don't know the exact mechanisms), but it has been quite consistent in societies throughout the world for decades now.

This is the reason that the 1970s overpopulation doom scenarios never came to pass. And it is the reason that foundations today focus on improving health and living standards, rather than birth rates specifically.

That has been true since the 1970's but unfortunately the latest numbers paint a very different picture. Birth rates are not dropping anymore in recently-rich countries according to the UN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...)

Reducing infant mortality rates and lowering poverty rates is thought to have this exact effect. The data between these statistics is correlated but the exact mechanism of action is still poorly understood.

In addition to previous answers, Melinda is working hard on giving access to contraception to the women. In fact, contraception is her "signature issue" (in her own words).

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