I had been assuming “cost per life saved equivalent” meant somewhere in the range of 50-100 QALYs, the rough length of a human life.
(The “equivalent” thing would be about it being spread over many people—it’s not the case that you literally gave one person a whole life, but you caused an equivalent amount of “good living” to happen.)
Yeah, that seems plausible, but I’d like GW to set it out and argue for it, rather than for me/us to have to try and guess to work it out. I’ve searched
Well I don’t understand that at all, and it seems to contradict my guess.
I thought DALYs had a more rigorous conversion than “we took our median estimate” and I thought a life was a full life, not just preventing death one time. Strike me wrong on this count.
DALYs do use a more defensible analysis; GiveWell aren’t using DALYs. This has some good and some bad aspects (related to the discussion in this post, although in this case the downside of defensibility is more that it doesn’t let you incorporate considerations that aren’t fully grounded).
The problem with just using DALYs is that on many views they overweigh infant mortality (here’s my view on some of the issues, but the position that they overweigh infant mortality is far from original). With an internal agreement that they significantly overweigh infant mortality, it becomes untenable to just continue using DALYs, even absent a fully rigorous alternative. Hence falling back on more ad hoc but somewhat robust methods like asking people to consider it and using a median.
[I’m just interpreting GW decision-making from publicly available information; this might easily turn out to be a misrepresentation.]
I had been assuming “cost per life saved equivalent” meant somewhere in the range of 50-100 QALYs, the rough length of a human life.
(The “equivalent” thing would be about it being spread over many people—it’s not the case that you literally gave one person a whole life, but you caused an equivalent amount of “good living” to happen.)
Yeah, that seems plausible, but I’d like GW to set it out and argue for it, rather than for me/us to have to try and guess to work it out. I’ve searched
http://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-effectiveness and http://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-effectiveness/cost-effectiveness-models
And still can’t find it.
From http://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/12/amf-population-ethics/
“According to the median GiveWell staff member, averting the death of a child under 5 averts about 8 DALYs (“Bed Nets”, B57)”
“each 5-or-over death prevented gets a weight of 4 “young life equivalent” units (“Bed Nets”, B62)”
“averting 1 DALY is equivalent to increasing ln(consumption) by one unit for three years (“Bed Nets”, B72)”
I think this “young life equivalent” is the same as what GiveWell calls in other places the “life equivalent.”
Well I don’t understand that at all, and it seems to contradict my guess.
I thought DALYs had a more rigorous conversion than “we took our median estimate” and I thought a life was a full life, not just preventing death one time. Strike me wrong on this count.
DALYs do use a more defensible analysis; GiveWell aren’t using DALYs. This has some good and some bad aspects (related to the discussion in this post, although in this case the downside of defensibility is more that it doesn’t let you incorporate considerations that aren’t fully grounded).
The problem with just using DALYs is that on many views they overweigh infant mortality (here’s my view on some of the issues, but the position that they overweigh infant mortality is far from original). With an internal agreement that they significantly overweigh infant mortality, it becomes untenable to just continue using DALYs, even absent a fully rigorous alternative. Hence falling back on more ad hoc but somewhat robust methods like asking people to consider it and using a median.
[I’m just interpreting GW decision-making from publicly available information; this might easily turn out to be a misrepresentation.]
Back in 2007, GiveWell approximately defined a life saved as saving someone who had a 50% chance of reaching age 60, which would very roughly imply ~30 DALYs per life saved. This analysis is also likely out of date with GiveWell’s modern views.
I agree I’d like to see more discussion of this issue.