a large-scale study evaluating our program in Kenya found each $1 transferred drove $2.60 in additional spending or income in the surrounding community, with non-recipients benefitting from the cash transfers nearly as much as recipients themselves. **Since 2018, we have asked GiveWell to fully engage with this study and others, but they have opted not to, citing capacity constraints. ** [emphasis mine]
This sounded pretty concerning to me, so I looked into it a bit more.
This GiveWell post mentions that they did engage with the study, or at least private draft results of it. An updated at the top of the post does clarify that they have not reviewed the full results. They explain the decision as:
We have not made it a high priority to update this analysis because it is very unlikely to change our recommendations to donors. This is because we estimate that the grants we have recommended on the margin are at least 5 times, and in most cases at least 10 times, as cost-effective as unconditional cash transfers, so we do not anticipate that any changes to our model from investigating this factor further would be large enough to lead us to direct Maximum Impact Fund grants to GiveDirectly at this time.
I guess that decision sounds fine to me. They’re basically saying that even taking the 2.6x multiple at face value, it doesn’t put GiveDirectly ahead of any of their top charities, so it’s not worth taking the time to fully evaluate it.
I’m not GiveDirectly, but in my view. It does make sense for GiveWell to deprioritise doing a more in-depth evaluation of GiveDirectly given resource constraints. However, when GiveWell repeatedly says in current research that certain interventions are or “5-8x cash”, I think it would be helpful for them to make it more clear that it might be only “2-4x cash”—they just haven’t had the time to re-evaluate the cash
This sounded pretty concerning to me, so I looked into it a bit more.
This GiveWell post mentions that they did engage with the study, or at least private draft results of it. An updated at the top of the post does clarify that they have not reviewed the full results. They explain the decision as:
I guess that decision sounds fine to me. They’re basically saying that even taking the 2.6x multiple at face value, it doesn’t put GiveDirectly ahead of any of their top charities, so it’s not worth taking the time to fully evaluate it.
Does that seem unfair to you?
I’m not GiveDirectly, but in my view. It does make sense for GiveWell to deprioritise doing a more in-depth evaluation of GiveDirectly given resource constraints. However, when GiveWell repeatedly says in current research that certain interventions are or “5-8x cash”, I think it would be helpful for them to make it more clear that it might be only “2-4x cash”—they just haven’t had the time to re-evaluate the cash