My intuition, which is shared by many, is that the badness of a child’s death is not merely due to the grief of those around them. Thus the question should not be comparing just the counterfactual grief of losing a very young child VS an [older adult], but also “lost wellbeing” from living a net-positive-wellbeing life in expectation.
I didn’t mean to imply that the badness of a child’s death is just due to grief. As I said in my main comment, I place substantial credence (2/3rds) in the view that death’s badness is the wellbeing lost. Again, this my view not HLIs.
The 13 WELLBY figure is the household effect of a single person being treated by StrongMinds. But that uses the uncorrected household spillover (53% spillover rate). With the correction (38% spillover) it’d be 10.5 WELLBYs (3.7 WELLBYs for recipient + 6.8 for household).
GiveWell arrives at the figure of 80% because they take a year of life as valued at 4.55 WELLBYs = 4.95 − 0.5 according to their preferred neutral point, and StrongMinds benefit ,according to HLI, to the direct recipient is 3.77 WELLBYs --> 3.77 / 4.55 = ~80%. I’m not sure where the 40% figure comes from.
If I understand correctly, the updated figures should then be:
For 1 person being treated by StrongMinds (excluding all household spillover effects) to be worth the WELLBYs gained for a year of life[1] with HLI’s methodology, the neutral point needs to be at least 4.95-3.77 = 1.18.
If we include spillover effects of StrongMinds (and use the updated / lower figures), then the benefit of 1 person going through StrongMinds is 10.7 WELLBYs.[2] Under HLI’s estimates, this is equivalent to more than two years of wellbeing benefits from the average life, even if we set the neutral point at zero. Using your personal neutral point of 2 would suggest the intervention for 1 person including spillovers is equivalent to >3.5 years of wellbeing benefits. Is this correct or am I missing something here?
1.18 as the neutral point seems pretty reasonable, though the idea that 12 hours of therapy for an individual is worth the wellbeing benefits of 1 year of an average life when only considering impacts to them, and anywhere between 2~3.5 years of life when including spillovers does seem rather unintuitive to me, despite my view that we should probably do more work on subjective wellbeing measures on the margin. I’m not sure if this means:
WELLBYs as a measure can’t capturing what I care about in a year of healthy life, so we should not use solely WELLBYs when measuring wellbeing;
HLI isn’t applying WELLBYs in a way that captures the benefits of a healthy life;
The existing way of estimating 1 year of life via WELLBYs is wrong in some other way (e.g. the 4.95 assumption is wrong, the 0-10 scale is wrong, the ~1.18 neutral point is wrong);
HLI have overestimated the benefits of StrongMinds;
I have a very poorly calibrated view of how good / bad 12 hours of therapy / a year of life is worth, though this seems less likely.
Would be interested in your thoughts on this / let me know if I’ve misinterpreted anything!
I didn’t mean to imply that the badness of a child’s death is just due to grief. As I said in my main comment, I place substantial credence (2/3rds) in the view that death’s badness is the wellbeing lost. Again, this my view not HLIs.
The 13 WELLBY figure is the household effect of a single person being treated by StrongMinds. But that uses the uncorrected household spillover (53% spillover rate). With the correction (38% spillover) it’d be 10.5 WELLBYs (3.7 WELLBYs for recipient + 6.8 for household).
GiveWell arrives at the figure of 80% because they take a year of life as valued at 4.55 WELLBYs = 4.95 − 0.5 according to their preferred neutral point, and StrongMinds benefit ,according to HLI, to the direct recipient is 3.77 WELLBYs --> 3.77 / 4.55 = ~80%. I’m not sure where the 40% figure comes from.
That makes sense, thanks for clarifying!
If I understand correctly, the updated figures should then be:
For 1 person being treated by StrongMinds (excluding all household spillover effects) to be worth the WELLBYs gained for a year of life[1] with HLI’s methodology, the neutral point needs to be at least 4.95-3.77 = 1.18.
If we include spillover effects of StrongMinds (and use the updated / lower figures), then the benefit of 1 person going through StrongMinds is 10.7 WELLBYs.[2] Under HLI’s estimates, this is equivalent to more than two years of wellbeing benefits from the average life, even if we set the neutral point at zero. Using your personal neutral point of 2 would suggest the intervention for 1 person including spillovers is equivalent to >3.5 years of wellbeing benefits. Is this correct or am I missing something here?
1.18 as the neutral point seems pretty reasonable, though the idea that 12 hours of therapy for an individual is worth the wellbeing benefits of 1 year of an average life when only considering impacts to them, and anywhere between 2~3.5 years of life when including spillovers does seem rather unintuitive to me, despite my view that we should probably do more work on subjective wellbeing measures on the margin. I’m not sure if this means:
WELLBYs as a measure can’t capturing what I care about in a year of healthy life, so we should not use solely WELLBYs when measuring wellbeing;
HLI isn’t applying WELLBYs in a way that captures the benefits of a healthy life;
The existing way of estimating 1 year of life via WELLBYs is wrong in some other way (e.g. the 4.95 assumption is wrong, the 0-10 scale is wrong, the ~1.18 neutral point is wrong);
HLI have overestimated the benefits of StrongMinds;
I have a very poorly calibrated view of how good / bad 12 hours of therapy / a year of life is worth, though this seems less likely.
Would be interested in your thoughts on this / let me know if I’ve misinterpreted anything!
More precisely, the average wellbeing benefits from 1 year of life from an adult in 6 African countries
3.77*(1+0.38*4.85)