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)
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)