Population Growth

Vaccination is one of the true wonders of humanity, having saved more lives than any other medical invention and providing population-level control of diseases that once ran rampant. Yet, we often fail to appreciate how fundamentally they have changed human life for the better.

बिबेक देबरॉय, ब्योर्न लोमबोर्ग, आदित्य सिन्हा

A focused investment in maternal and newborn health could save more than a million lives annually

كل دقيقتين، يموت تسعة أطفال حديثي الولادة وأم من مضاعفات تتعلق بالحمل والولادة. في المجموع، سيموت 2.4 مليون طفل حديث الولادة هذا العام خلال الشهر الأول من حياتهم، وستموت 295000 امرأة بسبب المضاعفات المرتبطة بالحمل.

বিশ্বে প্রতি দুই মিনিটে নয়টি নবজাতক এবং একজন মায়ের মৃত্যু হয় গর্ভধারণ ও প্রসবজনিত জটিলতায়। হিসাব অনুযায়ী, এই বছর বিশ্বে ২৪ লাখ নবজাতক শিশু তাদের জীবনের প্রথম মাসের মধ্যে মারা যেতে পারে এবং গর্ভাবস্থা সংক্রান্ত জটিলতায় মৃত্যু হতে পারে ২ লাখ ৯৫ হাজার নারীর।

Partisan “fact checks” are undermining open discourse about important issues, including climate change. Earlier this month I wrote an accurate post on Facebook about the growing polar-bear population. The post undercut alarmist climate narratives, so it was wrongly tagged as a falsehood.

Bjorn Lomborg writes in Mint with Bibek Debroy, the chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Together with Aditya Sinha they present a new research paper by Lomborg and Debroy. It argues for a number of amazing public policies for India, and they highlight four specific solutions that promise phenomenal benefits for every rupee spent: (1) Nutritional and health counseling, (2) family planning, (3) immunizations, and (4) agricultural R&D and certified seed production.

Though the images of abandoned cars in waterlogged East Coast streets might make you think otherwise, the relative toll that floods take on the U.S.—in property and lives—has decreased over time. Flooding costs as a share of gross domestic product declined almost 10-fold since 1903 to 0.05% of GDP, while annual flood death risk—fatalities per million—dropped almost threefold. World-wide data are sparser, but flood research shows costs relative to GDP and deaths relative to population have decreased globally from 1980 to 2010.

Hurricane season has arrived in the Atlantic Ocean. Already this summer Hurricanes Henri and Ida have caused headline-generating damage and flooding in the Gulf states, the Southeast and the Middle Atlantic states. Yet despite what you may have heard, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. In fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900.

Every two minutes, a woman dies of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Most of these deaths are preventable — and the world has been working on a solution for decades. The problem is the funds dedicated to solving the problem never go far enough.