It sounds like you’re saying the conversion factor from DALYs to income is based on how much more income people have when their lives are saved, but that’s not correct. The conversion factor from DALYs to income is written on GiveWell’s spreadsheet as “1 DALY is equivalent to increasing ln(income) by one unit for how many years”. In other words, how good is increasing income relative to extending someone’s life? This number is determined by taking the median of value judgments by about a dozen different GiveWell staff members. So what I said originally is correct.
It sounds like you’re saying the conversion factor from DALYs to income is based on how much more income people have when their lives are saved, but that’s not correct. The conversion factor from DALYs to income is written on GiveWell’s spreadsheet as “1 DALY is equivalent to increasing ln(income) by one unit for how many years”. In other words, how good is increasing income relative to extending someone’s life? This number is determined by taking the median of value judgments by about a dozen different GiveWell staff members. So what I said originally is correct.