Executive summary: Charity Entrepreneurship’s cost-effectiveness analyses overestimate the value of saving lives by not accounting for the years lived with disability that saved individuals will experience, which could be corrected by reducing the estimated DALYs averted from life-saving interventions by roughly 10%.
Key points:
Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) uses DALYs averted to measure impact, taking the full value of life-years saved from a pre-made table that only incorporates age-weighting and discounting.
This assumes saved individuals live perfectly healthy lives until their life expectancy, overestimating the impact by not accounting for the years lived with disability (YLDs) they will likely experience.
Examples from CE’s cost-effectiveness analyses demonstrate they use the full life-years saved values without adjusting for expected YLDs.
Data from the Global Burden of Disease Study suggests reducing the estimated DALYs averted from life-saving interventions by roughly 10% to account for YLDs.
In contrast, GiveWell uses a more nuanced “units of value” approach based on donor preferences, years of life lost, and staff weights, which may implicitly account for this issue.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Charity Entrepreneurship’s cost-effectiveness analyses overestimate the value of saving lives by not accounting for the years lived with disability that saved individuals will experience, which could be corrected by reducing the estimated DALYs averted from life-saving interventions by roughly 10%.
Key points:
Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) uses DALYs averted to measure impact, taking the full value of life-years saved from a pre-made table that only incorporates age-weighting and discounting.
This assumes saved individuals live perfectly healthy lives until their life expectancy, overestimating the impact by not accounting for the years lived with disability (YLDs) they will likely experience.
Examples from CE’s cost-effectiveness analyses demonstrate they use the full life-years saved values without adjusting for expected YLDs.
Data from the Global Burden of Disease Study suggests reducing the estimated DALYs averted from life-saving interventions by roughly 10% to account for YLDs.
In contrast, GiveWell uses a more nuanced “units of value” approach based on donor preferences, years of life lost, and staff weights, which may implicitly account for this issue.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.