GiveWellâs 2021 analysis of Pure Earth links to a sheet according to which its cost-effectiveveness is 18 times that of unconditional cash transfers.
Pure Earth is a GiveWell grantee that works to reduce lead and mercury exposure. In an August 2023 post, they provided a âpreliminary analysisâ suggesting that their lead reduction program in Bangladesh âcan avert an equivalent DALY for just under $1.â
I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare have a cost-effectiveness of 15.0 DALY/â$.
re: Pure Earth: GiveWell notes that its Pure Earth estimates are âsubstantially less rigorous than both our top charity cost-effectiveness estimates,â so I donât want to read too much into it. However, a claim that an intervention is merely 18X better at helping poor people than they are at helping themselves still strikes me as extraordinary, albeit in a way that we become acclimated to over time.
As to what good social theory would look like here, there is some nice work in sociology on the causes and consequences of lead exposure in America (see Muller, Sampson, and Winter 2018 for a review). I donât expect EA orgs to produce this level of granularity when justifying their work, but sometheory about why an opportunity exist would be very much appreciated, at least by me.
Iâve followed your work a bit w.r.t. animal welfare. Thatâs 15 chicken DALYs right? That seems plausible to me. The theory I would construct for this would start with the fact that there are probably more chickens living on factory farms at this moment than there are humans alive. Costco alone facilitates the slaughter of ~100M chickens/âyear. If you improve the welfare of just the Costco chickens by just 1% of a DALY per chicken, thatâs 1M DALYs. I could very much believe that a corporate campaign of that magnitude might cost about $66K (approximately 1M/â15). So I find this claim much less extraordinary.
re: Pure Earth: GiveWell notes that its Pure Earth estimates are âsubstantially less rigorous than both our top charity cost-effectiveness estimates,â so I donât want to read too much into it. However, a claim that an intervention is merely 18X better at helping poor people than they are at helping themselves still strikes me as extraordinary, albeit in a way that we become acclimated to over time.
For reference, Pure Earthâs estimate of 1 DALY/â$ is 5.59 (= 1/â(18*0.00994)) times GiveWellâs estimate.
Iâve followed your work a bit w.r.t. animal welfare.
Thanks!
Thatâs 15 chicken DALYs right?
No, it is 15.0 ânormalâ DALY/â$, i.e. 1.51 k times (= 15.0/0.00994) as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities.
Thanks for clarifying. That inevitably rests on a strong assumption about the relative importance of chicken welfare to human welfare, and it looks like your work builds on Bob Fischerâs estimates for conversion. Thatâs a fine starting point but for my tastes, this is a truly hard problem where the right answer is probably not knowable even in theory. When Iâm discussing this, Iâll probably stick to purely empirical claims, e.g., âwe can make X chickensâ lives better in Y waysâ or âwe can reduce meat consumption by Z poundsâ and be hand-wavy about the comparison between species. YMMV.
That inevitably rests on a strong assumption about the relative importance of chicken welfare to human welfare, and it looks like your work builds on Bob Fischerâs estimates for conversion.
Yupe, I relied on Rethink Prioritiesâ (RPâs) median welfare range of chickens of 0.332. However, even for their 5th percentile of 0.002, which is 0.602 % (= 0.002/â0.332) of their median, corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 9.09 (= 0.00602*1.51*10^3) times as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities. Uncertainty in other variables besides the welfare range means there might be something like a 5 % chance of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare being less cost-effective than GiveWellâs top charities, but I believe we should be comparing the expected cost-effectiveness of both interventions, not a worst-case scenario of corporate campaigns with the expected scenario of GiveWellâs top charities.
Thatâs a fine starting point but for my tastes, this is a truly hard problem where the right answer is probably not knowable even in theory.
Even if it is not knowable in theory[1], trade-offs are inevitable, so our actions implicitly attribute a given welfare range to chickens. So I would say we might as well rely on the best empirical estimate we have from RP instead of our vague intuitions.
Hi Seth,
GiveWellâs 2021 analysis of Pure Earth links to a sheet according to which its cost-effectiveveness is 18 times that of unconditional cash transfers.
I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare have a cost-effectiveness of 15.0 DALY/â$.
Thank you for the additional context!
re: Pure Earth: GiveWell notes that its Pure Earth estimates are âsubstantially less rigorous than both our top charity cost-effectiveness estimates,â so I donât want to read too much into it. However, a claim that an intervention is merely 18X better at helping poor people than they are at helping themselves still strikes me as extraordinary, albeit in a way that we become acclimated to over time.
As to what good social theory would look like here, there is some nice work in sociology on the causes and consequences of lead exposure in America (see Muller, Sampson, and Winter 2018 for a review). I donât expect EA orgs to produce this level of granularity when justifying their work, but some theory about why an opportunity exist would be very much appreciated, at least by me.
Iâve followed your work a bit w.r.t. animal welfare. Thatâs 15 chicken DALYs right? That seems plausible to me. The theory I would construct for this would start with the fact that there are probably more chickens living on factory farms at this moment than there are humans alive. Costco alone facilitates the slaughter of ~100M chickens/âyear. If you improve the welfare of just the Costco chickens by just 1% of a DALY per chicken, thatâs 1M DALYs. I could very much believe that a corporate campaign of that magnitude might cost about $66K (approximately 1M/â15). So I find this claim much less extraordinary.
You are welcome!
For reference, Pure Earthâs estimate of 1 DALY/â$ is 5.59 (= 1/â(18*0.00994)) times GiveWellâs estimate.
Thanks!
No, it is 15.0 ânormalâ DALY/â$, i.e. 1.51 k times (= 15.0/0.00994) as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities.
Thanks for clarifying. That inevitably rests on a strong assumption about the relative importance of chicken welfare to human welfare, and it looks like your work builds on Bob Fischerâs estimates for conversion. Thatâs a fine starting point but for my tastes, this is a truly hard problem where the right answer is probably not knowable even in theory. When Iâm discussing this, Iâll probably stick to purely empirical claims, e.g., âwe can make X chickensâ lives better in Y waysâ or âwe can reduce meat consumption by Z poundsâ and be hand-wavy about the comparison between species. YMMV.
Yupe, I relied on Rethink Prioritiesâ (RPâs) median welfare range of chickens of 0.332. However, even for their 5th percentile of 0.002, which is 0.602 % (= 0.002/â0.332) of their median, corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 9.09 (= 0.00602*1.51*10^3) times as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities. Uncertainty in other variables besides the welfare range means there might be something like a 5 % chance of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare being less cost-effective than GiveWellâs top charities, but I believe we should be comparing the expected cost-effectiveness of both interventions, not a worst-case scenario of corporate campaigns with the expected scenario of GiveWellâs top charities.
Even if it is not knowable in theory[1], trade-offs are inevitable, so our actions implicitly attribute a given welfare range to chickens. So I would say we might as well rely on the best empirical estimate we have from RP instead of our vague intuitions.
I think it is, as I strongly endorse expected total hedonistic utilitarianism.