As shown by the research conversation notes you link to, GiveWell lightly explored funding tobacco control policy advocacy in the past. Ultimately we decided to focus on other policy areas (alcohol policy, lead exposure, and self-harm from pesticide ingestion) that appeared more neglected. You can read more about our public health regulation research on this page—see “Cause areas we investigated at a shallow level and deprioritized,” and this spreadsheet, linked from footnote 24, which gives our estimates of how much is spent on tobacco policy (and other causes we looked into) per unit of burden.
Is there a reason financial burden was only calculated for lead? This seems very applicable to alcohol and tobacco (as well as others on the list) which have studies (like ones I mentioned) that quantify things like lost productivity, income displacement, individual and societal healthcare costs, etc?
(not saying it would have changed GiveWell’s prioritization, but it seems like relevant info)
In an ideal world, we would have included financial burden for tobacco in these rough calculations (which were mostly intended to narrow down what we’d focus on in our initial foray into public health regulation grants). But essentially, the last line of your response is the answer: because we value children’s lives so highly, we expected that incorporating the financial burden of tobacco use would not be enough for us to prioritize it over lead. Lead specifically affects young children, and the gap in estimated spend per unit of burden ($0.07 for lead versus $0.24 for tobacco) is large. If we were doing a deeper investigation of tobacco policy as a possible funding area, we would aim to more thoroughly account for its harms.
Hi, J.T.,
As shown by the research conversation notes you link to, GiveWell lightly explored funding tobacco control policy advocacy in the past. Ultimately we decided to focus on other policy areas (alcohol policy, lead exposure, and self-harm from pesticide ingestion) that appeared more neglected. You can read more about our public health regulation research on this page—see “Cause areas we investigated at a shallow level and deprioritized,” and this spreadsheet, linked from footnote 24, which gives our estimates of how much is spent on tobacco policy (and other causes we looked into) per unit of burden.
Thank you for the thought-provoking post!
Best,
Miranda Kaplan
GiveWell Communications Associate
Thanks for those links; very interesting.
Is there a reason financial burden was only calculated for lead? This seems very applicable to alcohol and tobacco (as well as others on the list) which have studies (like ones I mentioned) that quantify things like lost productivity, income displacement, individual and societal healthcare costs, etc?
(not saying it would have changed GiveWell’s prioritization, but it seems like relevant info)
Hi, J.T.,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you!
In an ideal world, we would have included financial burden for tobacco in these rough calculations (which were mostly intended to narrow down what we’d focus on in our initial foray into public health regulation grants). But essentially, the last line of your response is the answer: because we value children’s lives so highly, we expected that incorporating the financial burden of tobacco use would not be enough for us to prioritize it over lead. Lead specifically affects young children, and the gap in estimated spend per unit of burden ($0.07 for lead versus $0.24 for tobacco) is large. If we were doing a deeper investigation of tobacco policy as a possible funding area, we would aim to more thoroughly account for its harms.
Best,
Miranda