“Don’t freak out, Garrett”: The possibility for decreasing birth rates with aid

Garrett Hardin advocates “[governing] our actions by the ethics of a lifeboat”. He believes that by switching to systems of private ownership we will avoid the creation of a “commons” which will inevitably lead to high birth rates in developing countries. He argues that we should instead follow “natural population cycles”, withhold aid, and let populations balance themselves. While this may be a possible way to achieve sustainable populations, and he is right about certain dangers of giving aid to developing countries, I take this to be an extreme course of action. Murdoch and Oaten argue that aid, when distributed appropriately, is capable of solving the problem of growing birth rates. While this will face its own difficulties, I take it to be the more appropriate course of action.

Once again, Hardin’s view is that if we give aid to developing countries (or food directly, in the case of the World Food Bank) populations in these countries will increase. Murdoch and Oaten argue that if we give aid and ensure that it is going to the poorest people in these same developing countries, (the majority), this will actually help decrease birth rates. We could do this by making “health, education and jobs more broadly available to lower income groups in poor countries”, thereby “[contributing] significantly toward the motivation for smaller families that is the prerequisite of major reduction in birth rates” (456). It is towards this goal that we should “increase nonmilitary foreign aid, and…give it in ways, and to governments, that will deliver it to the poorest people and will improve their access to national economic institutions” (457). That is to say, aid could be distributed in such a way that would lead to decreased birth rates.

It is true that appropriately distributing aid and changing institutions responsible for this will be difficult. The authors acknowledge this. So, if we give aid to the wrong people, it might not be used in ways that necessarily decrease birth rates, but might instead be making the situation worse; aid could result in something resembling Hardin’s “ratchet effect”. Indeed, Hardin has helped us to see that aid is not necessarily helpful - not in the short term, the long term, for those countries or for the global community. We concede that when improperly distributed, aid might very well lead to higher birth rates. So, while we must proceed cautiously in our distribution of aid (to whom we give it and when), we must proceed nonetheless.

What is called for then is distribution of aid in proportion to how it will be used. Of course, this is more easily said than done, but I do not think that we should expect failure in our attempts. While it will be difficult to achieve, the course of action argued for by Murdoch and Oaten does seem possible. I close with what I consider to be a reason for optimism. As can be seen in the argument of Murdoch and Oaten, in certain ways we are responsible for institutional structures relating to birth rate policies in developing countries. Consider our support of “pro-Western” regimes abroad, more or less regardless of the policies they possess on issues of birth rate. In this way, we are responsible for current policies in these developing countries, and should be capable of implementing structures that would distribute aid appropriately. Considering this, it seems that we are more capable of affecting institutional structures than we may have previously thought ourselves to be.