Thanks for asking, tamgent! My guess is that people with the goal of saving lives had better donate to GiveWell’s top charities[1]:
Apparently, “the U.N. humanitarian office said on Friday it would cost an estimated $1.2 billion to meet the needs of 2.7 million people”, i.e. 444 $/person (= 1.2*10^9/(2.7*10^6)).
The median cost to save a life among GiveWell’s top charities is 5 k$.
This means satisfying the needs of each of the 2.7 M people would have to be as good as saving 0.0888 lives (= 444/(5*10^3)). According to Open Phil, “GiveWell uses moral weights for child deaths that would be consistent with assuming 51 years of foregone life in the DALY framework (though that is not how they reach the conclusion)”, so satisfying the needs one person would have to extend its healthy life expectancy by 4.53 years (= 0.0888*51).
I think it is unlikely that satisfying the needs would results in such large benefit. Healthy life expectancy at birth in the Palestine was 61.8 in 2016, which means satisfying the needs of one person would have to extend it by 7.33 % (= 4.53/61.8). I believe this can be thought of as satisfying the needs being equivalent to eliminating a 7.33 % risk of death of 2.7 million, which seems a clear overestimate of the real risk.
On the one hand, there may be interventions which satisfy the needs at much higher cost-effectiveness than the suggested above. On the other, this issue may have low neglectedness and tractability.
Thanks for asking, tamgent! My guess is that people with the goal of saving lives had better donate to GiveWell’s top charities[1]:
Apparently, “the U.N. humanitarian office said on Friday it would cost an estimated $1.2 billion to meet the needs of 2.7 million people”, i.e. 444 $/person (= 1.2*10^9/(2.7*10^6)).
The median cost to save a life among GiveWell’s top charities is 5 k$.
This means satisfying the needs of each of the 2.7 M people would have to be as good as saving 0.0888 lives (= 444/(5*10^3)). According to Open Phil, “GiveWell uses moral weights for child deaths that would be consistent with assuming 51 years of foregone life in the DALY framework (though that is not how they reach the conclusion)”, so satisfying the needs one person would have to extend its healthy life expectancy by 4.53 years (= 0.0888*51).
I think it is unlikely that satisfying the needs would results in such large benefit. Healthy life expectancy at birth in the Palestine was 61.8 in 2016, which means satisfying the needs of one person would have to extend it by 7.33 % (= 4.53/61.8). I believe this can be thought of as satisfying the needs being equivalent to eliminating a 7.33 % risk of death of 2.7 million, which seems a clear overestimate of the real risk.
On the one hand, there may be interventions which satisfy the needs at much higher cost-effectiveness than the suggested above. On the other, this issue may have low neglectedness and tractability.
I am not confident these are good/bad due to indirect effects (e.g. effects on animals).