On the impact side, some would suggest smaller numbers than the ones you point to here after discounting, and on the cost side some programs are fairly expensive. This all works to make the cost-effectiveness case less attractive, which explains limited attention in EA, I think.
We recently wrote a paper with colleagues from Gates trying to incorporate health and social benefits alongside economic ones to some set of schooling (and schooling related interventions)*, and find that they more than double the benefits, which makes them more competitive under some bar.
(*Though in our paper we just model additional years of schooling, rather than learning. One would imagine the benefits of more learning would be larger, but I haven’t followed that literature as closely.)
Helpful!
On the impact side, some would suggest smaller numbers than the ones you point to here after discounting, and on the cost side some programs are fairly expensive. This all works to make the cost-effectiveness case less attractive, which explains limited attention in EA, I think.
We recently wrote a paper with colleagues from Gates trying to incorporate health and social benefits alongside economic ones to some set of schooling (and schooling related interventions)*, and find that they more than double the benefits, which makes them more competitive under some bar.
(*Though in our paper we just model additional years of schooling, rather than learning. One would imagine the benefits of more learning would be larger, but I haven’t followed that literature as closely.)
Great paper—I love the approach of considering a broader range of impacts together.
On the impacts of schooling versus learning a good paper is https://riseprogramme.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/RISE_WP-049_Kaffenberger_Pritchett.pdf
Re. cost-effectiveness there are examples of very cost effective interventions—see analysis from @Vadim Albinsky above.