Thanks for this, and thanks Michael for the post. This made me think we should perhaps have an overall evaluation of the cause area “Helping refugees migrate” from different countries in crisis (e.g., South Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, NK etc.) and corresponding projects in receiving countries—such as comparing LINK and GiveDirectly’s cash transfers to refugess in Uganda.
I think that, for some countries, a useful proxy would be avg life expectancy, and maybe HDI differences (though HDI is not a cardinal measure, I think differences could help assess differences in life chances—especially if one can adjust for inequality). I made a personal rough evaluation about helping a specific Haitian family this way. However, I don’t think this would extrapolate well for other countries (where HDI data is unreliable) or for people fleeing from persecution (where the counterfactual is not the average life, but just death); plus, in some cases (like NK and Afghanistan), it would be interesting to take into account political factors (point 4), but I have no idea about how to start to even begin to quantify this.
Thanks for this, and thanks Michael for the post.
This made me think we should perhaps have an overall evaluation of the cause area “Helping refugees migrate” from different countries in crisis (e.g., South Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, NK etc.) and corresponding projects in receiving countries—such as comparing LINK and GiveDirectly’s cash transfers to refugess in Uganda.
I think that, for some countries, a useful proxy would be avg life expectancy, and maybe HDI differences (though HDI is not a cardinal measure, I think differences could help assess differences in life chances—especially if one can adjust for inequality). I made a personal rough evaluation about helping a specific Haitian family this way. However, I don’t think this would extrapolate well for other countries (where HDI data is unreliable) or for people fleeing from persecution (where the counterfactual is not the average life, but just death); plus, in some cases (like NK and Afghanistan), it would be interesting to take into account political factors (point 4), but I have no idea about how to start to even begin to quantify this.