The lives saved by [sic] AMD occur early in life, so AMF saves about 60 QALYs per life.
I’m not sure why people use this estimate, given that the effect of anti-malarial nets is primarily on avoiding the disease itself, the grief of family members, economic costs, and other downsides of having malaria, rather than on creating more years of happy life. This is because population tends to adjust for the death rate, i.e. “I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that the impact of life-saving interventions on fertility and population growth varies by context, above all with total fertility, and is rarely greater than 1:1.”
Not all EAs, or even all utilitarians, believe in total utilitarianism. The person-affecting view is much more intuitive for most people, and by that metric, saving QALYs of people already alive is qualitatively distinct from adding more QALYs by popping out more kids (even after adjusting for the second-order effects).
I’m not sure why people use this estimate, given that the effect of anti-malarial nets is primarily on avoiding the disease itself, the grief of family members, economic costs, and other downsides of having malaria, rather than on creating more years of happy life. This is because population tends to adjust for the death rate, i.e. “I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that the impact of life-saving interventions on fertility and population growth varies by context, above all with total fertility, and is rarely greater than 1:1.”
http://davidroodman.com/blog/2014/04/16/the-mortality-fertility-link/
Not all EAs, or even all utilitarians, believe in total utilitarianism. The person-affecting view is much more intuitive for most people, and by that metric, saving QALYs of people already alive is qualitatively distinct from adding more QALYs by popping out more kids (even after adjusting for the second-order effects).
Relevant, http://effective-altruism.com/ea/xo/givewells_charity_recommendations_require_taking/