Crowded slums in Rio de Janeiro provide a stark embodiment of the challenges presented by population growth. Photo: Crystal Davis, World Resource Institute (flickr)

The world’s seven billionth person is more likely than ever to see her fifth birthday, according to Save the Children. But some people might view that as a bad thing.

According the UN, the world population is now past seven billion. That’s got some people worrying about overcrowding and resource scarcity. In the worst case, it may even make them less likely to give aid to those in need.

But Save the Children, a disaster relief and long-term development charity that focuses on children, has a different take: The more children we save, they argue, the smaller the world’s population growth.

In places where child mortality is high, families have more children. “In the poorest countries, where parents are often petrified that their children will die and leave them to fend for themselves, it’s understandable that they would choose to have larger families," according to Brendan Cox of Save the Children. More children can help their parents farm the land, work in the family's small business, and otherwise improve the lot of the poorest of the poor.

But when that fear is mitigated by better income or greater access to aid, family sizes stay small. According to the Save the Children report, the child mortality rate and the global fertility rate have both fallen by more than half since 1970.

And when you have fewer children, you can invest more of your resources into each child, ensuring not only survival, but also success.

So, one way to curb population growth is to keep children alive and thriving.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Eritrean child receiving a vaccine. Photo: daveblume (flickr)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $10 billion-commitment over ten years to vaccinate children in developing countries on Friday. The nonprofit is calling on world leaders to join in this effort, aimed at drastically reducing the number of deaths of children under 5 years old.

There are economic benefits to reducing child mortality in developing countries as well. Countries with lower child mortality rates tend to be more economically developed, according to the World Health Organization.

Photo: Meanest Indian (Flickr)

Despite the many signs of progress, India’s quality of economic growth has been questioned by Unicef in its 2008 State of Asia-Pacific's Children report. According to the report, India’s poorest children are not being provided basic health care, despite the country’s impressive economic performance.

In 2006 alone, 2.1 million children under five years old died in India, giving the country an infant mortality rate of 57 per 1,000 births, one of the worst rates of child survival in the world. In fact, together China and India account for nearly a third of the child deaths in the world today.

Despite being a popular destination for medical tourism, unequal access to medical care continues to be a consequence of India's growing disparity between the rich and poor. Unicef's report found that “a child born to a family in the wealthiest fifth of the population is about three times more likely to receive all the basic vaccinations than a child born in the poorest fifth.” And it appears that the issue extends beyond economics — many women and children are also unable to access proper health care.

According to the report, "one out of every three women is underweight," putting them at risk of having low birthweight babies that "are 20 times more likely to die in infancy than healthy babies." Bloomberg.com's analysis of the report also points out that, "South Asia is the only region in the world where female life expectancy is lower than male life expectancy and where girls are more likely to be underweight than boys." Paradoxically, India also has "the world's largest number of professionally qualified women" and "more women as doctors, surgeons, scientists and professors than the United States has," according to Smile Foundation, a organization in India that targets at providing education and health to underprivileged children.

Yet no matter how robust its economy may be, unless the Indian government directly intervenes in issues of poverty and inequality plaguing the country, advancement in development may suffer. For progress to be sustainable, those who benefit from economic opportunities must not forget those left behind.