Over the past year and a half, GiveWell has been investigating family planning services that help people decide whether and when to have children. In their latest podcast episode, CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld and Senior Research Associate Dilhan Perera discuss the complexities of evaluating family planning programs. More on this work here.
I was curious to know how GiveWell assessed the decrease in human welfare due to decreasing human population. They simply neglected this consideration, as illustrated below, while implying accounting for it would make family planning interventions harmful.
How should we think about lives that don’t occur due to contraception? We assign no value to potential lives that don’t occur due to contraception. This is an important choice. Even putting a small positive weight on these potential lives (e.g., ~20% of the value of an existing life) could make family planning programs a net negative. [So I assume putting 100 % weight on potential lives, as implied by impartiality, would make family planning interventions harmful.] After consulting experts and stakeholders, we chose to assign no value because we think it aligns more with the views of program participants, staff, donors, and local decision-makers. We’re highly uncertain about this choice and don’t think we have the objective “right” answer to these complex questions. (more)
Thanks for the updates!
I was curious to know how GiveWell assessed the decrease in human welfare due to decreasing human population. They simply neglected this consideration, as illustrated below, while implying accounting for it would make family planning interventions harmful.