“If boosting economic growth is the best proxy” to future welfare...
I feel like this is a real crux here, because to me it seems counterintuitive to the point of absurd when applied to high income countries, but I’m always trying to keep an open mind. I can understand how economic growth could be a proxy in a low income country as welfare is likely to increase as a poor country gets richer.
It doesn’t seem to me likely that high economic growth in an already rich country would increase welfare very much at all. Can you point me to a resource which steelman’s this idea?
Thanks for the comment and keeping an open mind, Nick!
Just for reference, I share your intuition that one should not be focussing on economic growth:
I guess improving nearterm welfare is a better proxy [to increase future welfare] than boosting economic growth.
However:
If improving nearterm welfare is the best proxy to increase future welfare, helping animals seems better than saving human lives in low income countries. I estimate corporate campaigns for chicken welfare increase nearterm welfare 1.37 k times as cost-effectively as GiveWell’s top charities, and I am not confident that saving human lives is good/bad accounting for effects on animals[19].
It doesn’t seem to me likely that high economic growth in an already rich country would increase welfare very much at all. Can you point me to a resource which steelman’s this idea?
Intuitively, I would say doubling the income of everyone in high income countries would lead to greater nearterm human welfare (although it may decrease overall nearterm welfare due to increasing consumption of factory-farmed animals). However, I think the paper Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved is one of the best resources on this question. Here is the abstract:
Do larger incomes make people happier? Two authors of the present paper have published contradictory answers. Using dichotomous questions about the preceding day, [Kahneman and Deaton, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 16489–16493 (2010)] reported a flattening pattern: happiness increased steadily with log(income) up to a threshold and then plateaued. Using experience sampling with a continuous scale, [Killingsworth, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2016976118 (2021)] reported a linear-log pattern in which average happiness rose consistently with log(income). We engaged in an adversarial collaboration to search for a coherent interpretation of both studies. A reanalysis of Killingsworth’s experienced sampling data confirmed the flattening pattern only for the least happy people. Happiness increases steadily with log(income) among happier people, and even accelerates in the happiest group. Complementary nonlinearities contribute to the overall linear-log relationship. We then explain why Kahneman and Deaton overstated the flattening pattern and why Killingsworth failed to find it. We suggest that Kahneman and Deaton might have reached the correct conclusion if they had described their results in terms of unhappiness rather than happiness; their measures could not discriminate among degrees of happiness because of a ceiling effect. The authors of both studies failed to anticipate that increased income is associated with systematic changes in the shape of the happiness distribution. The mislabeling of the dependent variable and the incorrect assumption of homogeneity were consequences of practices that are standard in social science but should be questioned more often. We flag the benefits of adversarial collaboration.
Across countries, self-reported life satisfaction is correlated with real GDP per capita even for high income countries, which have a gross national income per capita of at least 13.8 k 2022-$:
Zooming out, you may want to have a look at some of the links here:
The above does not capture all the benefits of saving human lives due to indirect longterm effects. Based on an outside view perspective, one can say these (u_1) are roughly proportional to the advancement in time of the trajectory of the global real GDP[3], as economic growthis one of the best markers of progress[4], although arguably still far from ideal. Such advancement decreases astronomical waste, may decrease extinction risk, and is arguably approximately proportional to the real GDP per capita of the country where the life is saved times the life expectancy at birth there[5], which I suggested above is proportional to ln(r/r_0).
In one of the footnotes, I mention Tyler Cowen’s book Stubborn Attachments, which was discussed on The 80,000 Hours Podcast.
“If boosting economic growth is the best proxy” to future welfare...
I feel like this is a real crux here, because to me it seems counterintuitive to the point of absurd when applied to high income countries, but I’m always trying to keep an open mind. I can understand how economic growth could be a proxy in a low income country as welfare is likely to increase as a poor country gets richer.
It doesn’t seem to me likely that high economic growth in an already rich country would increase welfare very much at all. Can you point me to a resource which steelman’s this idea?
Thanks for the comment and keeping an open mind, Nick!
Just for reference, I share your intuition that one should not be focussing on economic growth:
However:
Intuitively, I would say doubling the income of everyone in high income countries would lead to greater nearterm human welfare (although it may decrease overall nearterm welfare due to increasing consumption of factory-farmed animals). However, I think the paper Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved is one of the best resources on this question. Here is the abstract:
Across countries, self-reported life satisfaction is correlated with real GDP per capita even for high income countries, which have a gross national income per capita of at least 13.8 k 2022-$:
Zooming out, you may want to have a look at some of the links here:
In one of the footnotes, I mention Tyler Cowen’s book Stubborn Attachments, which was discussed on The 80,000 Hours Podcast.