[eru]

Please take family planning into account: empirically parents aim for a specific number of offspring. Infant mortality does not usually change that target much, but it changes how many pregnancies are needed to reach it.

Thus: two million children saved, is two million pregnancies less. (To a first order approximation. As people get richer, all kinds of things change over time.) You are right in some sense: people are replaceable, and they will be replaced. But at a cost in resources and of course emotions.

Even if you only cared about the rainforest, and not about people at all, the smaller ecological footprint should warm your heart.

[NiklasMort]

Trust me I am not a hardhearted bastard but from what I have seen in the world, despite being absolute subjective ,I can tell you that the biggest problem with population is caused by religion and old beliefs. And this ain't specific to third world countries, there are enough big families (4+ kids) from certain ethnic groups in Europe/US.

Your pregnancy point is wrong though, so you say you save resources due to not having them start another pregnancy? Well the kid uses resources too and it does that at a increasing rate throughout the years. Once that kid has its own kids....you get the idea.

Unfortunately there never will be a global population control so all is left is this: upon a certain number we'll have a massive humanitarian catastrophe, most likely ending in the death of hundreds of millions due to starvation or wars. Not only will the environment suffer heavily, but once again humanity takes a step backwards towards becoming brutes again.

[eru]

I am saying that people choose a target number of offspring that make it to adulthood. If more kids die in infancy, they'll have more babies to make up the difference.

If less kids die in infancy, they will have less babies to make up the (negative) difference.

By the way, please have a look at http://economics.ucdavis.edu/events/papers/WuLeminJMPMalthus... and tell me what you think.

[haihaibye]

>> parents aim for a specific number of offspring

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

"women want an average of nine, while men say they want 11."

[eru]

That's interesting! Most of the rest of the world (even poor countries) operate differently. Will investigate.