Peter Singer argues that we ought to contribute to charities whose work is to increase the standard of living of those people, globally, who are worst off.

His argument relies on several assumptions:

1. That suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medicine are bad.

2. That people are equal in their ability to suffer, and so it is logically irrelevant whether they live in one country or another country, and whether you have a personal connection with them or not.

3. That a large percentage of Americans are capable of using some portion of their wealth to effectively prevent suffering without putting themselves at risk of starvation, disease, etc.

Though none of these are explicitly utilitarian, his view has a consequentialist orientation to it. He argues from these assumptions that most Americans have a moral duty to contribute most of their wealth to the global poor. Failing that, even if everyone in the US who is able to afford luxuries gave a small portion of their wealth to the global poor, it would prevent massive amounts of needless, preventable suffering. In order to disagree with his conclusions, it’s necessary to show either which of the above assumptions is wrong or how the logic fails. (Some people today took aim at Premise 2.)

One interesting implication of Singer’s view is that the cause of people’s suffering is pretty much irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if they are caught in a civil war, if there was a natural disaster or crop failure, if their government made bad decisions, if they personally made poor financial (or reproductive) decisions, if they were good or bad students, good or bad workers, if they are old or young.

In spite of the fact that this position is built entirely from a logical basis, it seems to gain the most emotional traction when raised with reference to the preventable deaths of innocent children. According to the World Health Organization, about 6 million of the young children

who die each year could be saved by low-tech, evidence-based, cost-effective measures such as vaccines, antibiotics, micronutrient supplementation, insecticide-treated bed nets and improved family care and breastfeeding practices. (UNICEF)

Peter Singer wrote a postscript (at the bottom of this page) which deals with a few key objections. Due to copyright restrictions (and your attention spans), I can’t reprint the whole thing, but here are excerpts:

There are, however, some matters of emphasis that I might put differently if I were to rewrite the article, and the most important of these concerns the population problem. I still think that, as I wrote then, the view that famine relief merely postpones starvation unless something is done to check population growth is not an argument against aid, it is only an argument against the type of aid that should be given.

I would now, however, have given greater space to the discussion of the population problem; for I now think that there is a serious case for saying that if a country refuses to take any steps to slow the rate of its population growth, we should not give it aid. This is, of course, a very drastic step to take, and the choice it represents is a horrible choice to have to make; but if, after a dispassionate analysis of all the available information, we come to the conclusion that without population control we will not, in the long run, be able to prevent famine or other catastrophes, then it may be more humane in the long run to aid those countries that are prepared to take strong measures to reduce population growth, and to use our aid policy as a means of pressuring other countries to take similar steps.

I should also make it clear that the kind of aid that will slow population growth is not just assistance with the setting up of facilities for dispensing contraceptives and performing sterilizations. It is also necessary to create the conditions under which people do not wish to have so many children. This will involve, among other things, providing greater economic security for people, particularly in their old age, so that they do not need the security of a large family to provide for them.

One other matter that I should now put forward slightly differently is that my argument does, of course, apply to assistance with development, particularly agricultural development, as well as to direct famine relief. Indeed, I think the former is usually the better long-term investment. Although this was my view when I wrote the article, the fact that I started from a famine situation, where the need was for immediate food, has led some readers to suppose that the argument is only about giving food and not about other types of aid. This is quite mistaken, and my view is that the aid should be of whatever type is most effective.

One thing I think is particularly interesting is that this discussion translates so well from 1972 to 2009. Although the fortunes of particular countries have shifted, we remain concerned about famine and about population control, and, if anything, we are more aware now of the limits of our global natural resources.