The Founders Pledge analysis seems to omit consideration of flow-through effects (essentially, the idea that charitable impact is also compounding, not only investment returns), which I think would make investing to give look significantly worse.
What Founders Pledge calls “investment-like giving opportunities” are very different from what GiveWell calls “flow-through effects”. The latter is about how (for example) a family that doesn’t have to deal with a child getting malaria may have more resources to deal with (for example) girl’s’ education.
I think flow-through effects would only change the analysis if they can compound long enough at a high enough rate or the marginal cost-effectiveness of the best interventions decreases enough over time. If the relative increase in benefits from the charity per year since intervening decrease enough, or even to 0, and the same intervention (or another) will be available at the same cost-effectiveness in the future, then you can just think of it like shifting when the flow-through effects happen.
GiveWell includes benefits from the long-term increase in income in their malaria cost-effectiveness analyses for AMF and MC, and it accounts for 14% to 43% of the value generated by the intervention, or a relative increase of 16% to 75% over the life-saving, depending on the region and charity. They assume it takes 10 years before you even start seeing these benefits, and they discount them 4%/year. Stock returns after discounting 4%/year are higher on average over 10 years, and this comparison is unfair to stocks, because the value of the flow-through effects has to be spread out over the beneficiary’s lifetime, not just 10 years.
As far as I can tell, they don’t consider other economic effects, e.g. on other people besides immediately family. Maybe it should be passed through to their descendants.
The Founders Pledge analysis seems to omit consideration of flow-through effects (essentially, the idea that charitable impact is also compounding, not only investment returns), which I think would make investing to give look significantly worse.
They did briefly discuss investment-like giving opportunities in section 2.1.
What Founders Pledge calls “investment-like giving opportunities” are very different from what GiveWell calls “flow-through effects”. The latter is about how (for example) a family that doesn’t have to deal with a child getting malaria may have more resources to deal with (for example) girl’s’ education.
My mistake.
I think flow-through effects would only change the analysis if they can compound long enough at a high enough rate or the marginal cost-effectiveness of the best interventions decreases enough over time. If the relative increase in benefits from the charity per year since intervening decrease enough, or even to 0, and the same intervention (or another) will be available at the same cost-effectiveness in the future, then you can just think of it like shifting when the flow-through effects happen.
GiveWell includes benefits from the long-term increase in income in their malaria cost-effectiveness analyses for AMF and MC, and it accounts for 14% to 43% of the value generated by the intervention, or a relative increase of 16% to 75% over the life-saving, depending on the region and charity. They assume it takes 10 years before you even start seeing these benefits, and they discount them 4%/year. Stock returns after discounting 4%/year are higher on average over 10 years, and this comparison is unfair to stocks, because the value of the flow-through effects has to be spread out over the beneficiary’s lifetime, not just 10 years.
As far as I can tell, they don’t consider other economic effects, e.g. on other people besides immediately family. Maybe it should be passed through to their descendants.