A richer society is a healthier scoiety. Thanks to trickle-down economics and capitalism, less children are dying each year than before:
The United Nations Children’s Fund just announced that deaths of young children worldwide hit an all-time low, falling beneath 10 million annually. Better practices to protect against disease and to enhance nutrition – more vaccinations and mosquito nets, more breast-feeding and vitamin A drops – played a role, but the most important factor in this global good-news story is economic growth.
It is no coincidence that as UNICEF was reporting the drop in child mortality, the World Bank was reporting global poverty rates had fallen as part of an extraordinary worldwide economic boom. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calls it “far and away the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime.”
It is clear that socialism and communism are not the answers here because China has been leading the way on this:
China accounted for almost all the recent drop in people living on less than $1 a day, experiencing a decline of 300 million since 1990. India has seen its mortality rate for children under the age of 5 decline from 123 per 1,000 in 1990 to 74 in 2005.
Such growth in developing countries is the result of, according to the World Bank, “further integration into world markets, better functioning internal markets and rising demand for many commodities.” In short: globalization and capitalism. When a goateed anarcho-syndicalist commits an act of vandalism at an anti-globalization protest, he might think that he’s striking a blow against The Man, but he’s really rallying against the chance some desperately poor little boy or girl has to live a healthier life.
Capitalism. It’s for the children.
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