How I think of the impact of saving a life (by donating to the likes of AMF):
a life is saved, and the grief caused by that death is averted
the person whose life is saved lives the rest of their life
Total fertility rates reduce because of lower child mortality
In terms of total number of lives lived, the saving-lives effect and the reducing-fertility rates effect probably roughly cancel each other out in places were the current fertility is high (source: David Roodman on GiveWell blog)
So saving the life helps us, one life at a time, to transition to a world where people have fewer children and are able to invest more in each of them (and averts plenty of bereavement grief along the way)
I am glad you are seriously considering the implications of your philosophical beliefs—this is laudable. I very much hope you don’t conclude it’s bad to save children’s lives.
Thanks, Sanjay! David Roodman’s findings had trickled through to me with a distortion, and it’s very good to have that corrected. Saving lives somewhere like Chad or Niger (where apparently the offset is significantly less than 1:1) doesn’t come into the career decision I’m making right now, so it looks like I’m safe.
Though I think I’ll want to make sure to do more reading on this before I donate to the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund again. Unless they’ve made it a policy not to support life-saving work in places where the fertility-mortality offset is weaker?
I don’t think they do. I seem to remember that this topic was debated some time back and GiveWell clarified their view that they don’t see it this way, but rather they just consider the immediate impact of saving a life as an intrinsic good. (although I would be more confident claiming that this is a fair representation of GiveWell’s views if I could find the place where they said this, and I can’t remember where it is, so apologies if I’m misremembering)
How I think of the impact of saving a life (by donating to the likes of AMF):
a life is saved, and the grief caused by that death is averted
the person whose life is saved lives the rest of their life
Total fertility rates reduce because of lower child mortality
In terms of total number of lives lived, the saving-lives effect and the reducing-fertility rates effect probably roughly cancel each other out in places were the current fertility is high (source: David Roodman on GiveWell blog)
So saving the life helps us, one life at a time, to transition to a world where people have fewer children and are able to invest more in each of them (and averts plenty of bereavement grief along the way)
I am glad you are seriously considering the implications of your philosophical beliefs—this is laudable. I very much hope you don’t conclude it’s bad to save children’s lives.
Thanks, Sanjay! David Roodman’s findings had trickled through to me with a distortion, and it’s very good to have that corrected. Saving lives somewhere like Chad or Niger (where apparently the offset is significantly less than 1:1) doesn’t come into the career decision I’m making right now, so it looks like I’m safe.
Though I think I’ll want to make sure to do more reading on this before I donate to the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund again. Unless they’ve made it a policy not to support life-saving work in places where the fertility-mortality offset is weaker?
I don’t think they do. I seem to remember that this topic was debated some time back and GiveWell clarified their view that they don’t see it this way, but rather they just consider the immediate impact of saving a life as an intrinsic good. (although I would be more confident claiming that this is a fair representation of GiveWell’s views if I could find the place where they said this, and I can’t remember where it is, so apologies if I’m misremembering)