It looks like youâre only accounting for increased incomes and avoided grief when estimating the effects of AMF other than on the people who would have died. Have you looked at all about trying to account for all the factors GiveWell lists under supplemental adjustments in their CEA? Just to take an example, GiveWell increases AMFâs benefits 9% to account for the reduction in malaria morbidity (time spent ill). If you take out the benefits from averted deaths, the morbidity effect is still 9% of the original benefit, not 9% of the new lower benefit. I would think that (and the other supplemental adjustment effects) might moderately shift your conclusions if you arenât currently accounting for them.
We already include GiveWellâs adjustments, including their supplemental intervention adjustments in the lives saved and income-generated figures we use (and then adjust in the case of the income effects).
I guess Iâm not quite sure what to make of your answer here. To take a concrete example, when computing AMFâs cost-effectiveness in an Epicurian framework, how many WELLBYs/â$1k are you attributing to reduced morbidity?
This is implicitly 0.42 WELLBYs per $1k if we go with the HLI adjusted figures, or itâs 1.67 WELLBYs per $1k if you take GiveWellâs income figures at face value.
Again, GiveWell doesnât explicitly model the morbidity effects other than by inflating the value of malaria preventionâs life-saving and income-increasing effect by 9%. We didnât tinker with the supplemental charity-level adjustments, supplemental intervention-level adjustments or their leverage/âfunging adjustments because that is, I expect, a whole can of worms. Because we kept these adjustments that GiveWell uses to tweak the value of income and life -- the morbidity effects that GiveWell implicitly incorporates, we implicitly include it as well.
Basically, if you think that the morbidity effects should merit a different adjustment than 9%, we donât account for that. If youâre satisfied with 9%, then itâs already accounted for, just in a weird opaque way as part of GiveWellâs suite of subjective adjustments.
Thanks for the response! If Iâm understanding you right, then Iâm not convinced I like your approach to this specific aspect of the model. But I do think any approach to handling the morbidity benefits is going to be very coarse without a lot of further research.
To try and illustrate my concern, let me just give a quick example for the DRC, working in GiveWellâs units of value rather than WELLBYs (because thatâs what Iâm more familiar with). If we take GiveWellâs estimate that the morbidity reduction is equal to a 9% of AMFâs pre-adjustment benefits, that means that per $100000, morbidity reduction generates 0.09*8570 = 771 units of value.
Based on how I think youâre doing it, when you go to calculate the non-life-extension benefits of AMF, you compute the benefits of morbidity reduction as 9% of (development benefits + avoided bereavement). If we just work with GiveWellâs numbers (which donât include the bereavement effects), that would be 0.09*2582 = 232 units of value/â$100000. Then when you go to calculate the life-extension benefits, you add in a 9% adjustment for morbidity reduction, which is 0.09*5987 = 539 units of value/â$100000. But that bookkeeping doesnât make any sense, as all the morbidity benefits should be accounted for in the non-life-extension category. Doing it the way I think you are, where youâre adding a factor of 0.09 to all benefits, ends up making AMF look worse in the Epicurean case, as well as in all cases with a higher neutral point for happiness.
This is actually even more important because youâre applying such a big downward adjustment to GiveWellâs numbers. If we divide GiveWellâs estimate of the development benefits by 4, then the development benefits are about 709 units of value/â$100000 and the total morbidity reduction benefits under GiveWellâs assumptions are 9% of the new total, or 597 units of value/â$100000. If you do the bookkeeping how I think youâre doing, only 58 units of value/â$100000 of morbidity reduction would get attributed to the non-life-extension benefit category. Correctly attributing all 597 units of value/â$100000 from morbidity reduction nearly doubles the estimated non-life-extension benefits of AMF.
I recognize that to some extent weâre working with made-up numbers here. But I think the general point that the supplemental adjustments need to be handled with care when doing this kind of component analysis is an important one. However, I do apologize in advance if Iâm misunderstanding how youâre approaching this right now.
It looks like youâre only accounting for increased incomes and avoided grief when estimating the effects of AMF other than on the people who would have died. Have you looked at all about trying to account for all the factors GiveWell lists under supplemental adjustments in their CEA? Just to take an example, GiveWell increases AMFâs benefits 9% to account for the reduction in malaria morbidity (time spent ill). If you take out the benefits from averted deaths, the morbidity effect is still 9% of the original benefit, not 9% of the new lower benefit. I would think that (and the other supplemental adjustment effects) might moderately shift your conclusions if you arenât currently accounting for them.
We already include GiveWellâs adjustments, including their supplemental intervention adjustments in the lives saved and income-generated figures we use (and then adjust in the case of the income effects).
I guess Iâm not quite sure what to make of your answer here. To take a concrete example, when computing AMFâs cost-effectiveness in an Epicurian framework, how many WELLBYs/â$1k are you attributing to reduced morbidity?
This is implicitly 0.42 WELLBYs per $1k if we go with the HLI adjusted figures, or itâs 1.67 WELLBYs per $1k if you take GiveWellâs income figures at face value.
Again, GiveWell doesnât explicitly model the morbidity effects other than by inflating the value of malaria preventionâs life-saving and income-increasing effect by 9%. We didnât tinker with the supplemental charity-level adjustments, supplemental intervention-level adjustments or their leverage/âfunging adjustments because that is, I expect, a whole can of worms. Because we kept these adjustments that GiveWell uses to tweak the value of income and life -- the morbidity effects that GiveWell implicitly incorporates, we implicitly include it as well.
Basically, if you think that the morbidity effects should merit a different adjustment than 9%, we donât account for that. If youâre satisfied with 9%, then itâs already accounted for, just in a weird opaque way as part of GiveWellâs suite of subjective adjustments.
Thanks for the response! If Iâm understanding you right, then Iâm not convinced I like your approach to this specific aspect of the model. But I do think any approach to handling the morbidity benefits is going to be very coarse without a lot of further research.
To try and illustrate my concern, let me just give a quick example for the DRC, working in GiveWellâs units of value rather than WELLBYs (because thatâs what Iâm more familiar with). If we take GiveWellâs estimate that the morbidity reduction is equal to a 9% of AMFâs pre-adjustment benefits, that means that per $100000, morbidity reduction generates 0.09*8570 = 771 units of value.
Based on how I think youâre doing it, when you go to calculate the non-life-extension benefits of AMF, you compute the benefits of morbidity reduction as 9% of (development benefits + avoided bereavement). If we just work with GiveWellâs numbers (which donât include the bereavement effects), that would be 0.09*2582 = 232 units of value/â$100000. Then when you go to calculate the life-extension benefits, you add in a 9% adjustment for morbidity reduction, which is 0.09*5987 = 539 units of value/â$100000. But that bookkeeping doesnât make any sense, as all the morbidity benefits should be accounted for in the non-life-extension category. Doing it the way I think you are, where youâre adding a factor of 0.09 to all benefits, ends up making AMF look worse in the Epicurean case, as well as in all cases with a higher neutral point for happiness.
This is actually even more important because youâre applying such a big downward adjustment to GiveWellâs numbers. If we divide GiveWellâs estimate of the development benefits by 4, then the development benefits are about 709 units of value/â$100000 and the total morbidity reduction benefits under GiveWellâs assumptions are 9% of the new total, or 597 units of value/â$100000. If you do the bookkeeping how I think youâre doing, only 58 units of value/â$100000 of morbidity reduction would get attributed to the non-life-extension benefit category. Correctly attributing all 597 units of value/â$100000 from morbidity reduction nearly doubles the estimated non-life-extension benefits of AMF.
I recognize that to some extent weâre working with made-up numbers here. But I think the general point that the supplemental adjustments need to be handled with care when doing this kind of component analysis is an important one. However, I do apologize in advance if Iâm misunderstanding how youâre approaching this right now.