We do a shallow calculation for grief in the same way we did in Donaldson et al. (2020). The best estimate we found is from Oswald and Powdthavee (2008): a panel study in the UK which finds the effect on life satisfaction due to the death of a child in the last year as being −0.72 (adjusted for a 0-10 scale). According to Clark et al. (2018), the duration of grief is ~5 years. Based on data from the UNDP, we calculate that the average household size across the beneficiary countries (excluding the recipient of the nets) is 4.03 people (row 16). Hence, an overall effect of grief per death prevented is (0.72 x 5 x 0.5) x 4.03 = 7.26 WELLBYs. However, we think this is an upper bound because it doesn’t account for the counterfactual grief averted. If you avert the death of someone, they will still die at some point in the future, and the people who love them will still grieve.
I’m not sure what you find weird about those numbers.
As described elsewhere, the approach of measuring happiness/sentiment in a cardinal way and comparing this to welfare from pivotal/tragic life events measured in years/disability, seems challenging and the parent comment’s concerns about the magnitudes seems dubious is justified.
GHD is basically built on a 70-year graveyard of very smart people essentially doing meta things that don’t work well.
Some concerns that an educated reasonable person should raise (and have been raised are)
this seems to have been made by assembling meta studies, without a lot of affirmative buy in by experts
the meaning of the numbers built on survey results seems ephemeral or at least much more complicated.
the claims by Stronger Minds is that they almost literally solve depression, this is dubious yet seems to follow the same framework here.
The above aren’t dispositive, but the construct of WELLBY does not at all seem easy to compare to QALYs and DALYs, and the pat response is unpromising.
Can you elaborate a little bit about Stronger Minds claiming they almost literally solve depression? That would be a pretty strong claim, considering how treatment resistant depression can be.
I suppose I would be open to the idea that in Western countries we are treating the long tail of very treatment resistant depression whereas in developed countries, there are many people who get very very little of any kind of care and just a bit of therapy makes a big difference.
This phrasing is a yellow flag to me, it’s a remarkably large effect, without contextualizing it in a specific, medical claim (e.g. so it can be retreated from).
I feel very uncomfortable mutiplying, dividing adding up these wellbys as if they are interchangeable numbers.
I have skimmed this—but if I’m reading the graph right… you believe therapy generates something like 3 wellbys of benefit per attendee?
And you say in your elephant bednet report “We estimate the grief-averting effect of preventing a death is 7 WELLBYs for each death prevented”
So a person attending therapy is roughly equivalent to preventing one parent’s grief at death of a child?
This doesn’t seem plausible to me.
Apologies if I have misunderstood somewhere.
Yeah, it is a bit weird, but you get used to it! No weirder than using QALYs, DALYs etc. which people have been doing for 30+ years.
Re grief, here’s what we say in section A.2 of the other report
I’m not sure what you find weird about those numbers.
As described elsewhere, the approach of measuring happiness/sentiment in a cardinal way and comparing this to welfare from pivotal/tragic life events measured in years/disability, seems challenging and the parent comment’s concerns about the magnitudes seems dubious is justified.
GHD is basically built on a 70-year graveyard of very smart people essentially doing meta things that don’t work well.
Some concerns that an educated reasonable person should raise (and have been raised are)
this seems to have been made by assembling meta studies, without a lot of affirmative buy in by experts
the meaning of the numbers built on survey results seems ephemeral or at least much more complicated.
the claims by Stronger Minds is that they almost literally solve depression, this is dubious yet seems to follow the same framework here.
The above aren’t dispositive, but the construct of WELLBY does not at all seem easy to compare to QALYs and DALYs, and the pat response is unpromising.
Can you elaborate a little bit about Stronger Minds claiming they almost literally solve depression? That would be a pretty strong claim, considering how treatment resistant depression can be.
I suppose I would be open to the idea that in Western countries we are treating the long tail of very treatment resistant depression whereas in developed countries, there are many people who get very very little of any kind of care and just a bit of therapy makes a big difference.
In this other thread, see this claim.
This phrasing is a yellow flag to me, it’s a remarkably large effect, without contextualizing it in a specific, medical claim (e.g. so it can be retreated from).The description of the therapy itself is not very promising. https://strongminds.org/our-model/
This is a coarse description. It does not suggest how such a powerful technique is reliably replicated and distributed.
Strong Minds appears to orchestrate its own evaluations, controlling data flow by local hiring contractors.