How much variation in life expectancy is there across and within counties? I would expect the life expectancy of those whose lives are saved by GiveWell charities to be among the very lowest and if there’s lots of variation in life expectancy, then the relevant life expectancy could be significantly lower than at the county or national level. [...] Your bounds seem too high to me, given the evidence you cite.
That’s a good point—something we could look into more next time. (In general we spent more time on the decisions specific to using SWB rather than general technicalities, but of course, if people are going to use the results then these are important too.)
Technically, we should look at life expectancy given the current age rather than life expectancy at birth, and this increases as we survive more years (in practice).
Yes that’s true—we mentioned this in a previous version which got dropped, which is my omission. From WHO life tables, the life expectancy for 0-1 year olds is 64.4 and for 1-4 year olds is 66.1 (for Kenyan boys, in 2016 - for girls it’s 68.9 and 70.3), so not a huge difference, although this could be tightened up in future.
I’m not entirely sure how life expectancy is calculated but I think that ideally, you’d also account for life expectancy trends over time.
You’re right. Our World in Data provides a helpful explanation of the different types of life expectancy. We used the UN’s projected life expectancy for 2020-2025, so this should predict how long we can expect babies born today to live. You can see graphs for Kenya here and here (I haven’t figured out the exact methodology and the differences between their ‘standard’ and ‘probabilistic’ projections).
On life expectancy
That’s a good point—something we could look into more next time. (In general we spent more time on the decisions specific to using SWB rather than general technicalities, but of course, if people are going to use the results then these are important too.)
Yes that’s true—we mentioned this in a previous version which got dropped, which is my omission. From WHO life tables, the life expectancy for 0-1 year olds is 64.4 and for 1-4 year olds is 66.1 (for Kenyan boys, in 2016 - for girls it’s 68.9 and 70.3), so not a huge difference, although this could be tightened up in future.
You’re right. Our World in Data provides a helpful explanation of the different types of life expectancy. We used the UN’s projected life expectancy for 2020-2025, so this should predict how long we can expect babies born today to live. You can see graphs for Kenya here and here (I haven’t figured out the exact methodology and the differences between their ‘standard’ and ‘probabilistic’ projections).
Great, sounds like you’re on top of all of this!