To expand a little on “this seems implausible”: I feel like there is probably a mistake somewhere in the notion that anyone involves thinks that <doubling income as having 1.3 WELLBY and severe depression has having a 1.3 WELLBY effect.>
The mistake might be in your interpretation of HLI’s document (it does look like the 1.3 figure is a small part of some more complicated calculation regarding the economic impacts of AMF and their effect on well being, rather than intended as a headline finding about the cash to well being conversion rate). Or it could be that HLI has an error or has inconsistencies between reports. Or it could be that it’s not valid to apply that 1.3 number to “income doubling” SoGive weights for some reason because it doesn’t actually refer to the WELLBY value of doubling.
I’m not sure exactly where the mistake is, so it’s quite possible that you’re right, or that we are both missing something about how the math behind this works which causes this to work out, but I’m suspicious because it doesn’t really fit together with various other pieces of information that I know. For instance - it doesn’t really square with how HLI reported Psychotherapy is 9x GiveDirectly when the cost of treating one person with therapy is around $80, or how they estimated that it took $1000 worth of cash transfers to produce 0.92 SDs-years of subjective-well-being improvement (“totally curing just one case of severe depression for a year” should correspond to something more like 2-5 SD-years).
I wish I could give you a clearer “ah, here is where i think the mistake is” or perhaps a “oh, you’re right after all” but I too am finding the linked analysis a little hard to follow and am a bit short on time (ironically, because I’m trying to publish a different piece of Strongminds analysis before a deadline). Maybe one of the things we can talk about once we schedule a call is how you calculated this and whether it works? Or maybe HLI will comment and clear things up regarding the 1.3 figure you pulled out and what it really means.
To expand a little on “this seems implausible”: I feel like there is probably a mistake somewhere in the notion that anyone involves thinks that <doubling income as having 1.3 WELLBY and severe depression has having a 1.3 WELLBY effect.>
The mistake might be in your interpretation of HLI’s document (it does look like the 1.3 figure is a small part of some more complicated calculation regarding the economic impacts of AMF and their effect on well being, rather than intended as a headline finding about the cash to well being conversion rate). Or it could be that HLI has an error or has inconsistencies between reports. Or it could be that it’s not valid to apply that 1.3 number to “income doubling” SoGive weights for some reason because it doesn’t actually refer to the WELLBY value of doubling.
I’m not sure exactly where the mistake is, so it’s quite possible that you’re right, or that we are both missing something about how the math behind this works which causes this to work out, but I’m suspicious because it doesn’t really fit together with various other pieces of information that I know. For instance - it doesn’t really square with how HLI reported Psychotherapy is 9x GiveDirectly when the cost of treating one person with therapy is around $80, or how they estimated that it took $1000 worth of cash transfers to produce 0.92 SDs-years of subjective-well-being improvement (“totally curing just one case of severe depression for a year” should correspond to something more like 2-5 SD-years).
I wish I could give you a clearer “ah, here is where i think the mistake is” or perhaps a “oh, you’re right after all” but I too am finding the linked analysis a little hard to follow and am a bit short on time (ironically, because I’m trying to publish a different piece of Strongminds analysis before a deadline). Maybe one of the things we can talk about once we schedule a call is how you calculated this and whether it works? Or maybe HLI will comment and clear things up regarding the 1.3 figure you pulled out and what it really means.
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