I’ve recently written the following paper you might find interesting. It’s the first essay I’ve written for my PhD and, as the title suggests, I try to understand what a billionaire EA should do to maximise happiness. In brief, my conclusion is that mental health and happiness interventions look a lot more promising that our present anti-poverty and anti-malaria ones.
I’ve been meaning to put something on the EA forum on this topic for a while but haven’t got around to it (because I don’t really use/understand the EA Forum and saw this on facebook).
Regarding the conclusions you reach:
-I’m actually sceptical that Conditional Cash Transfers increase happiness at all and it’s therefore questionable how useful they are. I don’t think we have enough evidence yet to know: we’d need to track people’s experiences of happiness over at least 6 months. (I’ve previously discussed this with Rob Wiblin and there might be an argument about the long-run economic benefits of CCTs that I’d like to see in made in writing).
-So, I think research in the effectiveness of poverty looks very good!
-I didn’t consider tobacco taxation or micro-nutrient fortification but my guess is that these are unlikely to change people’s experiences of happiness by much either. I’d suppose that a smoking reduction would help people live longer but there’s a further value question of how much you weight helping people live longer (I take the epicurean view on death, which means I’m uncertain there’s any value in prolonging life, but feel free to ignore this).
-I didn’t consider anything about SMS immunisation reminders. Intuitively that does look quite promising from the modules I took into behavioural econ a couple of years back, but I’m sure your knowledge is much more up to do that mine and you’ve harvested everything you can from the Behavioural Insights Team and so on. If you would like to talk to some (more) behavioural economists I have at least one friend working in the area I could put in touch with.
Thanks for the thoughtful response! Some thoughts on these that I will also email you but thought that other folks on the EA Forum might like being kept in the loop.
With regards to your essay, I really like it and found a lot of parts very interesting. This is in fact an area we looked into a little bit, although did not write much on it. I strongly agree that ‘internal happiness interventions’ (‘IHIs’) are extremely neglected in contrast to the ‘external happiness interventions’ (‘EHIs’) compared to what a rational utilitarian should value.
I did end up with a different conclusion on the issue, although I still think the case for this is strong, I just do not see it as quite as strong as the listed poverty options. In general I think it’s very hard to compare the possible expected value of research where it is very hard to get an estimate (e.g. IHI research) to the expected value of a more direct intervention (e.g. AMF). I think we mainly differed in how we weighted the Easterlin paradox and the expected value difference. I see how you came up with the 10-18 number but think that it was generated using a pretty favourable example given the DALY weightings I have seen for different things. For more info, check out Jeff Kauffman’s handy listing of disabilities by weighting https://www.jefftk.com/p/disability-weights.
Although the endline idea of online CBT/mindfulness is very interesting, I also have major concerns about evidence about even the offline versions of these and would expect the effect on happiness to be smaller than is currently stated in many studies if they were stronger studies/less publication bias etc. For example, the following review on mindfulness research found that of 21 pre-registered RCTs on mindfulness meditation, only 38% were published 30 months after registration, showing worrying signs of publication bias, and the median sample size of 124 RCTs was 54, including controls (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153220).
I have a lot of sympathy for your argument about death being over-valued (and we are aiming to publishing a blog post on this at some point), but it’s worth taking into account the happiness effects on a parent of losing a child (which can still make reducing death very significantly net positive.) This is even without taking into account the economics arguments mentioned.
I think a combination of all the points made above make me think that while this is a promising area for research, I would give it a smaller chance of revealing something more cost effective than AMF than I would give to doing more direct poverty research (on say SMS or CCT).
I would be very interested in talking more about this as I can imagine my views changing quite a bit. Particularly it would be great to talk about what research you plan on doing going forward on it.
Re: conclusions
CCTs not increasing happiness at all would surprise me. The cash component of the disagreement might come from different general views about the evidence that increased income leads to happiness. But a huge part of the benefit would be from the activity that is being CCTed. For example, even if the cash component of CCT for vaccines only lead to short term happiness, the vaccines might lead to ongoing happiness (details would largely dependent on the condition). There is substantial evidence that parents mourn the passing of a child, and thanks for medical advances, even in the developing world losing a child is a relatively rare event, so it’s unlikely there’s as strong a hedonic adaptation effect.
I do agree that happiness is not nearly as tracked as I would like and I would want to see long term happiness data in conjunction with health/wealth data for any intervention/RCT we end up doing. I think this is particularly true for CCTs, but I would love to see more happiness data almost everywhere.
Research was hard. Some people seemed to think it was much more effective than any direct options and others thought the opposite. I still do not have very confident views despite the time I have put into researching it. Would be super interested if you or anyone else had a cost effectiveness estimate for poverty research based on historical data that might be able to shed some light on the question. The biggest question mark is to what extent research affects where resources are spent counterfactually, rather than simply providing a justification for existing programs to continue.
On tobacco, even if one takes the epicurean view on death there seems to be considerable suffering caused to relatives from premature death (both from sadness and lost income if the person is still working age or due to widows being treated terribly in many cultures). When thinking about how much to value someone’s life we both took the above into account and the average happiness of the population we would be helping.
With regards to iron, this is in fact one of the ones we are more confident is connected directly to happiness. Anemia is quite correlated with negative emotional states relative to other health interventions we considered. It is so cost-effective than even small benefits in happiness really add up.
For SMS would be happy to talk to any behavioural economists who you think might be informed in the area.
Dear Joey,
I’ve recently written the following paper you might find interesting. It’s the first essay I’ve written for my PhD and, as the title suggests, I try to understand what a billionaire EA should do to maximise happiness. In brief, my conclusion is that mental health and happiness interventions look a lot more promising that our present anti-poverty and anti-malaria ones.
https://www.academia.edu/25088361/What_Should_A_Utilitarian_Billionaire_Do_To_Maximise_Happiness
I’ve been meaning to put something on the EA forum on this topic for a while but haven’t got around to it (because I don’t really use/understand the EA Forum and saw this on facebook).
Regarding the conclusions you reach:
-I’m actually sceptical that Conditional Cash Transfers increase happiness at all and it’s therefore questionable how useful they are. I don’t think we have enough evidence yet to know: we’d need to track people’s experiences of happiness over at least 6 months. (I’ve previously discussed this with Rob Wiblin and there might be an argument about the long-run economic benefits of CCTs that I’d like to see in made in writing).
-So, I think research in the effectiveness of poverty looks very good!
-I didn’t consider tobacco taxation or micro-nutrient fortification but my guess is that these are unlikely to change people’s experiences of happiness by much either. I’d suppose that a smoking reduction would help people live longer but there’s a further value question of how much you weight helping people live longer (I take the epicurean view on death, which means I’m uncertain there’s any value in prolonging life, but feel free to ignore this).
-I didn’t consider anything about SMS immunisation reminders. Intuitively that does look quite promising from the modules I took into behavioural econ a couple of years back, but I’m sure your knowledge is much more up to do that mine and you’ve harvested everything you can from the Behavioural Insights Team and so on. If you would like to talk to some (more) behavioural economists I have at least one friend working in the area I could put in touch with.
I hope that’s helpful. If you have any questions I’m best reached via the facebook or michael.plant@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Thanks for the thoughtful response! Some thoughts on these that I will also email you but thought that other folks on the EA Forum might like being kept in the loop.
With regards to your essay, I really like it and found a lot of parts very interesting. This is in fact an area we looked into a little bit, although did not write much on it. I strongly agree that ‘internal happiness interventions’ (‘IHIs’) are extremely neglected in contrast to the ‘external happiness interventions’ (‘EHIs’) compared to what a rational utilitarian should value.
I did end up with a different conclusion on the issue, although I still think the case for this is strong, I just do not see it as quite as strong as the listed poverty options. In general I think it’s very hard to compare the possible expected value of research where it is very hard to get an estimate (e.g. IHI research) to the expected value of a more direct intervention (e.g. AMF). I think we mainly differed in how we weighted the Easterlin paradox and the expected value difference. I see how you came up with the 10-18 number but think that it was generated using a pretty favourable example given the DALY weightings I have seen for different things. For more info, check out Jeff Kauffman’s handy listing of disabilities by weighting https://www.jefftk.com/p/disability-weights.
Although the endline idea of online CBT/mindfulness is very interesting, I also have major concerns about evidence about even the offline versions of these and would expect the effect on happiness to be smaller than is currently stated in many studies if they were stronger studies/less publication bias etc. For example, the following review on mindfulness research found that of 21 pre-registered RCTs on mindfulness meditation, only 38% were published 30 months after registration, showing worrying signs of publication bias, and the median sample size of 124 RCTs was 54, including controls (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153220).
I have a lot of sympathy for your argument about death being over-valued (and we are aiming to publishing a blog post on this at some point), but it’s worth taking into account the happiness effects on a parent of losing a child (which can still make reducing death very significantly net positive.) This is even without taking into account the economics arguments mentioned.
I think a combination of all the points made above make me think that while this is a promising area for research, I would give it a smaller chance of revealing something more cost effective than AMF than I would give to doing more direct poverty research (on say SMS or CCT).
I would be very interested in talking more about this as I can imagine my views changing quite a bit. Particularly it would be great to talk about what research you plan on doing going forward on it.
Re: conclusions
CCTs not increasing happiness at all would surprise me. The cash component of the disagreement might come from different general views about the evidence that increased income leads to happiness. But a huge part of the benefit would be from the activity that is being CCTed. For example, even if the cash component of CCT for vaccines only lead to short term happiness, the vaccines might lead to ongoing happiness (details would largely dependent on the condition). There is substantial evidence that parents mourn the passing of a child, and thanks for medical advances, even in the developing world losing a child is a relatively rare event, so it’s unlikely there’s as strong a hedonic adaptation effect.
I do agree that happiness is not nearly as tracked as I would like and I would want to see long term happiness data in conjunction with health/wealth data for any intervention/RCT we end up doing. I think this is particularly true for CCTs, but I would love to see more happiness data almost everywhere.
Research was hard. Some people seemed to think it was much more effective than any direct options and others thought the opposite. I still do not have very confident views despite the time I have put into researching it. Would be super interested if you or anyone else had a cost effectiveness estimate for poverty research based on historical data that might be able to shed some light on the question. The biggest question mark is to what extent research affects where resources are spent counterfactually, rather than simply providing a justification for existing programs to continue.
On tobacco, even if one takes the epicurean view on death there seems to be considerable suffering caused to relatives from premature death (both from sadness and lost income if the person is still working age or due to widows being treated terribly in many cultures). When thinking about how much to value someone’s life we both took the above into account and the average happiness of the population we would be helping.
With regards to iron, this is in fact one of the ones we are more confident is connected directly to happiness. Anemia is quite correlated with negative emotional states relative to other health interventions we considered. It is so cost-effective than even small benefits in happiness really add up.
For SMS would be happy to talk to any behavioural economists who you think might be informed in the area.