Why aren't relocated births accounted for in cost-effectiveness analyses of family planning charities?

By David Hammerle @ 2025-01-16T23:26 (+2)

It seems like most cost-effectiveness analyses always miss the largest potential benefit that family planning charities have.  They can avert births, which can effectively shift births out of regions with very high child mortality, like sub-Saharan Africa, into regions that have much lower child mortality.  By my estimates, this could make family planning charities like Lafiya Nigeria, Family Empowerment Media, and MSI Reproductive Choices a more cost-effective way to save the life of a child under 5 years old than any of GiveWell's top charities.

I asked one person about this who used to do development work in South Africa, and she said it is because it might be seen as an attempt by people with a Eugenics-based perspective to reduce the number of black people that are born.  But the fertility rate is so high in sub-Saharan Africa that quite a lot of births would need to be averted just to bring the fertility rate down to a level on par with the rest of the world, so I don't see why that would be a concern.

Does anyone know?

Richard Y Chappell🔸 @ 2025-01-17T03:29 (+25)

How does averting a birth cause an extra child to be born somewhere else?

Larks @ 2025-01-18T02:06 (+5)

Visa cap on the number of souls allowed to migrate to earth per year.

David Hammerle @ 2025-01-19T02:48 (+3)

Thank you for the reply.  That seems like a very relevant question.

It wouldn't, exactly.  Most directly, it would reduce the total number of people, past, present, and future, by one.  So, for example, if there were 11 total people (past, present, and future) and this one birth was averted, then there would be 10 people.  So if we assume that the average total overall welfare of those 10 people are at an '11' and the average welfare of the one averted birth was at a '1', the total average welfare with the birth would be a '10' and the total average welfare without the birth would be an '11'.  So, as long as the total welfare of the person's birth that wss averted is lower than the average welfare of a person overall excluding the birth, the resulting average would move closer to the average of all those other people and improve.

So, the next question would be what the average welfare of a person is, and if it is higher or lower than the person who's birth might be averted and by how much.  My best guess regarding that would be that technology will continue to advance over time, improving the quality of life and longevity of people as we move into the future, and I think that improvement will continue for a very long time.  And, if that is correct, that would bring up the average welfare of people quite a lot, making it useful to avert births in the present in general, and especially births of people that have ~7.3% chance of dying before the age of 5 years old, like people do in sub-Saharan Africa.

What do you think?

I don't have a huge amount of confidence in my theory of why the average welfare of a person, past, present, and future would be a lot greater than the welfare of a person in sub-Saharan Africa who's birth might be averted, but I do have a fair amount of confidence that the welfare of a person in sub-Saharan Africa is a lot lower than the average.  Do you agree or no?

I also think it's fairly likely that reducing the current population of the world would be beneficial by default, and that especially reducing population growth in sub-Saharan Africa would be beneficial, both because the population growth rate in sub-Saharan Africa is so much higher than the average for the rest of the world, and because it's a very low income area where it's more difficult to economically support a larger population.

Or, if I try to look at it more simply, if the person is never born, then the person doesn't have that 7.3% chance of dying before the age of 5 years old, which seems good.

I suppose one reason this factor doesn't tend to be included in cost-effectiveness analyses for family planning charities could just be that it is difficult to explain.

David Mathers🔸 @ 2025-01-20T11:09 (+5)

Maximize average welfare is a bad policy goal: https://utilitarianism.net/population-ethics/#:~:text=The%20average%20view%2C%20variable%20value,lives%20with%20positive%20well%2Dbeing.

David Hammerle @ 2025-01-22T02:16 (+1)

I read the article you posted a link to, but I still think maximizing average welfare is a good policy goal.  To me it seems like maximizing average welfare is entirely what altruism is about.  The way I think of it is that each person, when the person is created, has an equal chance of being any one person that has ever or will ever live, so we want such possibilities to be as good as possible, on average.

The first issue that the article describes is that if there were only one person enduring a lot of suffering, the world could be improved by adding a bunch more people also enduring a lot of suffering, but a little bit less.  To me that seems correct.  In that world, having a chance to live a life that involves a little bit less suffering would be an improvement.  Also, oddly, those people would be exist in a sort of a backwards world where the objective is not to live as long as possible, but to live as short a life as possible.

The second issue that the article describes is that adding a bunch of lives with positive welfare, but less than the average, could be worse than adding only one life with a very negative amount of welfare.  Here, again, this makes sense to me.  It's less of a problem to have a very small chance of living the one really bad life than a much larger chance of living a life that is worse than the average, but not as much worse.

But thanks for the reply.  I didn't realize this was so much in contention.  It's good to know.

Regardless, could you possibly tell me which utilitarian theory you ascribe to, and how it would or wouldn't apply to my question regarding family planning charities?  To me it still seems like avoiding that 7.6% chance of dying before the age of 5 years old is a really great advantage of family planning charities in sub-Saharan Africa.