Topics Ethics

Question When I help poor people with medicines, food, my own work or with money, I am also contributing to the growth of population in the Earth in the sense that I make it more probable that more people live and have offspring. Population is also a challenge to the life in the Earth and is probably one of the main reasons of poverty, environment destruction and wars. So perhaps making something good at the present could be a bad idea for the future. Is this right?, or is it just a excuse for not helping people in need?

Accepted:
December 1, 2008

Comments

As much as your factual assumptions probably strike you as commonsensical, they are actually problematic. You are assuming that larger families have an especiallynegative impact on the environment. It seems like that must be true, but in fact our impact depends on our lifestyle. For example, average carbon emissions here in the most affluent nations are about 34 times what they are in the poorest nations. For that reason, havingone child in the USis much more of a threat to the environment than having eight in animpoverished African or Indian village.

Thinking about environmental impact instead of simply aboutpopulation may eliminate your worries about helping people in developingcountries. But perhaps not. Possibly what really bothers you is the feeling that people don’t deserve to behelped, if they make the foolish choice to have so many children. Of course, the children shouldn’t be blamedfor their parents' mistakes, but setting that aside, it’s important tounderstand why impoverished people have so many children.

Jeffrey Sachs has an illuminating discussion of the issue inThe End of Poverty. One factor that leads to large familysize is the rate of child mortality. Themore children who die young, the more children people have in the first place,as insurance against losing them. Ironically,then, if we do not “Save the Children” (as that organization says we should),we actually do more to keep reproduction rates high in poor areas of the world. Fertility rates fall as women are empowered,schools become available, people have alternatives to farmwork, etc. So all kinds of aid to developing countries reducerates of reproduction.

After looking into the facts, I think you will concludethat the population/environment worry really is a mere excuse not to give. Concern about the environment ought to makeus worry about overconsumption in affluent countries, not stop us fromresponding to the problems of the world’s most destitute people.