Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
Which is all well and good. we saw exactly the same type of drop in child mortality 100 years ago in Nigeria, but what is not generally talked about is two things.
Rather less than a hundred years ago--by most measures, Nigeria's infant mortality rate is higher than Haiti's.

In any case, unless we're going to take a morally unsustainable Malthusian position that we'll let children die off en masse, we don't have much choice in the matter, do we?

First, is the drop brought about by permanent changes in the environment (e.g. swamp draining, massive but long last infrastructure, etc.) or is it brought about by external applications (e.g. vaccines)? The source of the change is crucial since external changes cannot be assumed to be lasting, while local changes, especially environmental, can be.
The evidence is. that vaccination, better access to primary health care, and education (especially female education) play key roles. However, these are both external (in that UNICEF, WHO, and others often play a key role in initial vaccination campaigns) and internal (in that these are almost always sustained over time by local governments).

The second key point is that there is a culture lag relating to perceptions of how many children are "acceptable" and "necessary", and this is where the time element in the changes leading to drops in infant mortality becomes critical.
Exactly the demographic transition I referred to earlier. In Haiti the fertility rate is high, but far from the highest in the developing world. There is some evidence that a slow demographic transition is underway, and as we know from other cases this is something that can be aided through support for family planning and especially female education and labour force participation.


Education may or may not be useful as an indicator, it depends on education for what and the quality of the education, and Tom's point about setting up a diasporic brain drain is well taken (consider the Canada - US relationship on this one, and when it flips).
I'm not sure of any country where increased primary/secondary school attendance and improved basic literacy rates can be considered a developmental negative. Yes, brain-drains are a problem--but less of a problem than an uneducated population. (I also wouldn't underestimate the very positive impact that diaspora remittances can have over multiple generations--Jordan, one of the proportionately highest exporters of semiskilled and skilled labour in the world--being a case in point.)


Consider, by way of example, the Muslim Brotherhood - well educated, fairly decent disposable income and a tendency to use it in kinetic terms, at least for the first 40-50 years of the operation. Nutrition, education and income do not automatically equate to a peaceful nation state .
Again, I'm not sure of the argument--that populations should be kept poor so that they won't do bad things with increased resources? (I would quibble in your characterization of the MB too--in general the movement has been quite peaceful, except where faced with massive state repression or foreign occupation.)

Tom touched on the slave country problem, and it really is at the root of a lot of the cultural problems Haiti is facing.
We don't do governance reform and rule-of-law well--its partly a cultural problem, but much more so a problem of entrenched interests and massive disparities of wealth and power, coupled with often inappropriate external models. Indeed, it is that context of years of exploitation, poverty, and inequality that help to shape Haitian political culture. There was, however, a broad consensus that (very gradual) progress was being made, pre-earthquake.

Again, I'm certainly not painting a rosy picture--I think the odds of disappointing results are quite high. However, so have the odds of a great many human endeavors!