It seems like, in context to EA, if you’re interested in helping people at a global scale (and not focused on global catastrophic risks), you’re probably focused on global health.
I am wondering: Is there a clear reason EAs focus on global health over other cause areas such as education, women’s rights, economic growth, democracy, corruption, international relations, and other broad improvements to society?
Like, has there been any kind of rigorous research that suggests we should focus much more on global health in the poorest parts of the world as opposed to women’s empowerment in middle income countries or reducing gang violence in Central America?
Hi James! There’s actually a variety of EA-aligned charities in those areas. Some that come to mind:
Teaching at the Right Level (Education)
NOVAH No Violence At Home (women’s domestic abuse prevention)
ACTRA (reducing criminality in Central America)
Africa Jobs Fund (economic growth)
Lafiyah Nigeria (contraceptives provision, so women’s empowerment)
They all have their own theories as to why they might be unusually effective.
As for why:
The differing moral priorities about saving a life versus improving a life. You sound like you’d be more on board with the moral prioritisation of the Happier Lives Institute rather than GiveWell, so do check them and their recommendations out.
Global health really has a huge funding gap. So it’s quite easily to find something that works effectively—you take a working preventative (e.g. malaria nets, chemoprevention, vaccines, vitamin supplements) and you put cash towards incentivising it / tackle supply-side issues. There’s just a lot that can be done in this space in ways that replicate. It’s quite easy to get into. A lot of other intervention types are just a lot fiddlier.
The richer a country is, the more arguments there are that effective interventions helping citizens within it should be funded by its government. To be clear, EAs still definitely work on this stuff! But they tend to bid for government funding pots, not for effective giving money, so you hear about them less.
Ah, thank you! Could I ask, do you know how I could have come to have learned about these? Like, are there any websites compiling these charities or organizations with research relevant to the question in my post?
GiveWell has lots of research on evaluating programs. Check out their website and podcast, and their grant recipients.
Happier Lives Institute does a similar thing to GiveWell, but with a different moral prioritisation (and a substantially smaller budget).
Giving Green and Power for Democracies do similarly, and I think Peace Per Dollar might be starting up.
Giving What We Can has its “other supported charities” list.
Ambitious Impact has lists of EA-incubated charities (but again, this is a different thing from effective giving opportunities, as they’re often targeting other funding sources).
The EA Forum itself runs a donation election every December—you can look up last year’s.
Coefficient Giving’s website has problem area descriptions and grant dispersals.
I think this is an important question more people should be thinking about (particularly if one believes that there is going to be a significant increase in philanthropic funding due to AI money).
Rather than refer to research I can write about my personal reasons/takes:
I primarily work in global health (and AI safety), and my main reason for doing so is: measurability: it’s possible to measure the impact of global health projects fairly rigorously, compared to democracy promotion or economic growth. Additionally, many global health problems are probably just more tractable compared to various issues you noted (e.g. tackling corruption or improving international coordination or improving democracy). Nonetheless, something being less tractable and measurable doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on it. Still, if you care about impact attribution, global health is likely to be better than many other “near-termist” areas you can compare it to (due to an existing high-quality evidence base, ease of organizing RCTs etc.)
That said, I believe global health delivery (e.g. charities delivering a particular drug, or service) projects seem to dominate EA’s global development portfolio.
My impression is that, the primary reason for this overconcentration is global health delivery being more measurable compared to economic growth, health systems strengthening and other things.
I believe that (influential) EAs overindex on measurability in global development, and there should be more funding, labour and attention going into global development projects that have a “worse measurability profile”. But I think this is part of a broader issue of EA community having surprisingly weak infrastructure (besides Probably Good) for helping/incentivizing people to think about career/issue prioritization within global development (or more politics-flavored issues).
[Question] Has Global Health Been Rigorously Compared With Other Cause Areas?
Link post
It seems like, in context to EA, if you’re interested in helping people at a global scale (and not focused on global catastrophic risks), you’re probably focused on global health.
I am wondering: Is there a clear reason EAs focus on global health over other cause areas such as education, women’s rights, economic growth, democracy, corruption, international relations, and other broad improvements to society?
Like, has there been any kind of rigorous research that suggests we should focus much more on global health in the poorest parts of the world as opposed to women’s empowerment in middle income countries or reducing gang violence in Central America?
Hi James! There’s actually a variety of EA-aligned charities in those areas. Some that come to mind:
Teaching at the Right Level (Education)
NOVAH No Violence At Home (women’s domestic abuse prevention)
ACTRA (reducing criminality in Central America)
Africa Jobs Fund (economic growth)
Lafiyah Nigeria (contraceptives provision, so women’s empowerment)
They all have their own theories as to why they might be unusually effective.
As for why:
The differing moral priorities about saving a life versus improving a life. You sound like you’d be more on board with the moral prioritisation of the Happier Lives Institute rather than GiveWell, so do check them and their recommendations out.
Global health really has a huge funding gap. So it’s quite easily to find something that works effectively—you take a working preventative (e.g. malaria nets, chemoprevention, vaccines, vitamin supplements) and you put cash towards incentivising it / tackle supply-side issues. There’s just a lot that can be done in this space in ways that replicate. It’s quite easy to get into. A lot of other intervention types are just a lot fiddlier.
The richer a country is, the more arguments there are that effective interventions helping citizens within it should be funded by its government. To be clear, EAs still definitely work on this stuff! But they tend to bid for government funding pots, not for effective giving money, so you hear about them less.
Ah, thank you! Could I ask, do you know how I could have come to have learned about these? Like, are there any websites compiling these charities or organizations with research relevant to the question in my post?
GiveWell has lots of research on evaluating programs. Check out their website and podcast, and their grant recipients.
Happier Lives Institute does a similar thing to GiveWell, but with a different moral prioritisation (and a substantially smaller budget).
Giving Green and Power for Democracies do similarly, and I think Peace Per Dollar might be starting up.
Giving What We Can has its “other supported charities” list.
Ambitious Impact has lists of EA-incubated charities (but again, this is a different thing from effective giving opportunities, as they’re often targeting other funding sources).
The EA Forum itself runs a donation election every December—you can look up last year’s.
Coefficient Giving’s website has problem area descriptions and grant dispersals.
Thank you so much!!!
Happier lives Institute: https://www.happierlivesinstitute.org/
EA also does democracy charity evaluation which you might want to look into https://www.powerfordemocracies.org/
I think this is an important question more people should be thinking about (particularly if one believes that there is going to be a significant increase in philanthropic funding due to AI money).
Rather than refer to research I can write about my personal reasons/takes:
I primarily work in global health (and AI safety), and my main reason for doing so is:
measurability: it’s possible to measure the impact of global health projects fairly rigorously, compared to democracy promotion or economic growth. Additionally, many global health problems are probably just more tractable compared to various issues you noted (e.g. tackling corruption or improving international coordination or improving democracy). Nonetheless, something being less tractable and measurable doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on it. Still, if you care about impact attribution, global health is likely to be better than many other “near-termist” areas you can compare it to (due to an existing high-quality evidence base, ease of organizing RCTs etc.)
That said, I believe global health delivery (e.g. charities delivering a particular drug, or service) projects seem to dominate EA’s global development portfolio.
My impression is that, the primary reason for this overconcentration is global health delivery being more measurable compared to economic growth, health systems strengthening and other things.
I believe that (influential) EAs overindex on measurability in global development, and there should be more funding, labour and attention going into global development projects that have a “worse measurability profile”. But I think this is part of a broader issue of EA community having surprisingly weak infrastructure (besides Probably Good) for helping/incentivizing people to think about career/issue prioritization within global development (or more politics-flavored issues).
Thank you!