If you fund sub-Saharan Africa with USAID you get more Sub-Saharan Africans.
Is this true? Typically lower mortality and higher quality of life are associated with lower birth rates. There are also various programs to lower birth rates more directly, like providing access to contraception and educating women, which could plausibly outweigh any increase in births due to saving lives.
A quick search finds a study saying "USAID was one of the largest providers of family planning services worldwide with almost $600 million for contraceptive services in poor countries." and a New York Times article claiming that $8.1 million in contraception was ruined after being stranded in Belgium due to the cuts. I do not know how much of these programs ultimately ended up being cut vs. being moved around.
This Givewell analysis estimates that each year of contraception prevents 0.3 unwanted pregnancies, of which 45% result in birth. This comment from someone at MSI Reproductive Choices says their average global cost per year of protection is $4.88, though increased marginal access could in some cases be $20 or more. So preventing a birth apparently costs around $36 for a private charity. Obviously USAID contraception could be less efficient than EA-adjacent charities, or more efficient due to increased economies of scale, but just multiplying it out implies USAID directly prevented the birth of around 16 million third-worlders per year, and that the one stranded Belgium shipment meant for Africa resulted in an additional 200,000 africans being born (or more because $8.1 million was the cost of the physical contraception, while $4.88 includes last-mile delivery). Realistically some of those averted pregnancies will probably be delayed rather than prevented entirely, since people might get access to contraception and use it based on how many children they already have, but it gives a rough idea. The Lancet study claims cuts would result in additional 14 million deaths but that's over 5 years, over the same period USAID contraception programs are (by these rough estimates) preventing 80 million from being born. Of course the Lancet's death estimates are based on assuming cuts to programs like PEPFAR that were actually moved to a different department, and I can't easily find whether the same happened with the contraception programs, so I don't know how it actually balances out.
I think this demonstrates the nature of low-hanging fruit/"neglectedness" in international aid and the importance of even very rough numbers over going by vibes. Because places like Africa are very poor, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. Because more people are interested in saving lives than preventing births, there is even more low-hanging fruit in the latter. It's $3,000 to $8,000 to buy enough anti-malarial bednets to save a single african life, but only ~$36 to improve the average well-being of humanity by preventing someone from being born in Africa to begin with. Even though contraception was only 1.3% of USAID's $47 billion pre-cut budget, it seemingly had more of an impact on third-world population numbers than the rest combined. Spending fairly trivial amounts of money on increased contraception funding for the third-world could have a much bigger impact, save money long-term, and be much less controversial than the USAID cuts. Of course left-wingers are not immune to this sort of innumeracy either - consider how estimates of net lifetime costs to the taxpayer for Somalian migrants is over a million dollars per migrant, because doing things in the first world is expensive. Instead of improving the life of a single poor african by importing him to the first world you could save the lives of hundreds of africans by spending the money on insecticidal nets. And then because birth-control is even more neglected, for the cost of saving a single life from malaria you could potentially prevent over a hundred from being born.
p
Is this true? Typically lower mortality and higher quality of life are associated with lower birth rates. There are also various programs to lower birth rates more directly, like providing access to contraception and educating women, which could plausibly outweigh any increase in births due to saving lives.
A quick search finds a study saying "USAID was one of the largest providers of family planning services worldwide with almost $600 million for contraceptive services in poor countries." and a New York Times article claiming that $8.1 million in contraception was ruined after being stranded in Belgium due to the cuts. I do not know how much of these programs ultimately ended up being cut vs. being moved around.
This Givewell analysis estimates that each year of contraception prevents 0.3 unwanted pregnancies, of which 45% result in birth. This comment from someone at MSI Reproductive Choices says their average global cost per year of protection is $4.88, though increased marginal access could in some cases be $20 or more. So preventing a birth apparently costs around $36 for a private charity. Obviously USAID contraception could be less efficient than EA-adjacent charities, or more efficient due to increased economies of scale, but just multiplying it out implies USAID directly prevented the birth of around 16 million third-worlders per year, and that the one stranded Belgium shipment meant for Africa resulted in an additional 200,000 africans being born (or more because $8.1 million was the cost of the physical contraception, while $4.88 includes last-mile delivery). Realistically some of those averted pregnancies will probably be delayed rather than prevented entirely, since people might get access to contraception and use it based on how many children they already have, but it gives a rough idea. The Lancet study claims cuts would result in additional 14 million deaths but that's over 5 years, over the same period USAID contraception programs are (by these rough estimates) preventing 80 million from being born. Of course the Lancet's death estimates are based on assuming cuts to programs like PEPFAR that were actually moved to a different department, and I can't easily find whether the same happened with the contraception programs, so I don't know how it actually balances out.
I think this demonstrates the nature of low-hanging fruit/"neglectedness" in international aid and the importance of even very rough numbers over going by vibes. Because places like Africa are very poor, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. Because more people are interested in saving lives than preventing births, there is even more low-hanging fruit in the latter. It's $3,000 to $8,000 to buy enough anti-malarial bednets to save a single african life, but only ~$36 to improve the average well-being of humanity by preventing someone from being born in Africa to begin with. Even though contraception was only 1.3% of USAID's $47 billion pre-cut budget, it seemingly had more of an impact on third-world population numbers than the rest combined. Spending fairly trivial amounts of money on increased contraception funding for the third-world could have a much bigger impact, save money long-term, and be much less controversial than the USAID cuts. Of course left-wingers are not immune to this sort of innumeracy either - consider how estimates of net lifetime costs to the taxpayer for Somalian migrants is over a million dollars per migrant, because doing things in the first world is expensive. Instead of improving the life of a single poor african by importing him to the first world you could save the lives of hundreds of africans by spending the money on insecticidal nets. And then because birth-control is even more neglected, for the cost of saving a single life from malaria you could potentially prevent over a hundred from being born.
More options
Context Copy link