I see.  And that IS relevant to my original question regarding family planning in settings with high child mortality.

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.

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.

MSI Reproductive Choices.

Because through family planning it can shift births from sub-Saharan Africa to circumstances with lower child mortality, probably saving the life of a kid under 5 years old for less than $1,000.