How did we get here?

In watching this presentation, I learned that there is a fairly strong correlation between annual income and the child mortality rate (the likelihood a child will die before his/her fifth birthday) in any given country.  Unsurprisingly, this relationship is inverse, meaning that the more money a person earns in a year, the less likely children are to pass away so young.  More money means, in general, better medical technology and more easily-accessible ways of preventing childhood diseases.  Interestingly, though, the proportion is not one-to-one; that is, there are some countries that have the same child mortality rate but have a large discrepancy in income.  For example, the average person in Swaziland makes around $4500 annually, and the average person in Equatorial Guinea makes just under $19,000.  However, in spite of this there is a definite trend.

A question I have about the presentation is about the distribution of countries.  The idea behind the presentation, I gathered, is to show the differences between income and child mortality rates regionally.  For the most part it excellently portrays this in an easy-to-read manner, but it lumps all the more developed countries like the United States, Canada, Japan, and most of Western Europe into one “region,” the high-income OECD which I believe breaks the continuity a little.

In the face of all of this, what I individually can do to help seems like a very daunting question.  I believe the best I can do is to go personally to less developed areas of the world and do what I can for the people I meet there. There are countless organizations that coordinate trips to places in Africa, Latin America, and southeast Asia.  Since not everyone can run off and join the Peace Corps, perhaps some suggestions for things to do while living comfortably might be in order.  Donating money to such organizations is an easy way to make a small difference and contribute to a worthy cause.  For individuals who want to make a more direct impact, even simple things like writing an editorial to a local newspaper or lobbying a politician can make a bigger difference than one might expect.  Awareness is the key to change.

As a nation, the United States has enough money and other resources to make a significant impact on global development.  However, money sometimes is not enough.  Developing nations are often overpopulated, but have a high infant mortality rate.  When more developed countries swoop in with medical treatments to keep infants from dying, the overpopulation often worsens.  The solution, therefore, lies in a cultural value of smaller families.  Social reform is never easy, but urbanization could be a factor in helping advance smaller family sizes.  Large families tend to be more popular in agricultural areas, since farming requires lots of help, but when people live in the city smaller families tend to become the norm. Building factories and creating urban jobs for people who otherwise have nothing may advance the development of some developing nations.  If smaller family sizes become valued in overpopulated countries, then the population growth will slow and create some breathing room in the economy for the next generation.  Another step might be to build schools and educate people as teachers, so that the coming generation can be educated and continue to improve the nation.

There is no magic solution to global development, but rather lots of smaller steps individuals and nations can take to advancing the quality of human life worldwide.