I think as it stands the evidence is already pretty good (on this particular question). I only skimmed through the zero donors briefly, and I may go through in more detail in the future, or someone else can do it, but I found that a pretty substantial majority of the zero donors were either students or on a “low income” based on my quick informal and pretty conservative coding of people as “low income” if they were on roughly the UK minimum wage or less. I would guesstimate at least around 70% were full time or “low income” by this measure. But I then went through counting those who had donated a significant sum in the past (roughly $1000 or higher) or had pledged more than 10% in the future, and again, this was a majority, including some people (roughly 10) who weren’t in the student/low income group, so yet more were students or low income or pledged 10% or previously donated substantial amount.
I also extended this analysis to the people pledging <$500 but more than $0, and the figures were even more overwhelming: by my count roughly 90% were students or low income.
I’m being conservative given the rough nature of my coding and counting, but I think these figures are still too low, because I didn’t count people who were on around $20,000 per year (which was quite a few, and still a lowish income), people who pledged 5% (which is still respectable) or just said something vague like “Yes” about future donations. Just to give a flavour of the pledges: a significant number were even higher than the GWWC pledge (i.e. for roughly every 2 people pledging 10%, within the zero donors, there was 1 pledging much more than that: 50% income, 90% income, everything above basic living expenses and so on). So far from being not-EAs at all, a lot of these people seem like exemplary EAs!
What evidence could we get now or in the future that’d speak to the different hypotheses being offered in response to this?
I think as it stands the evidence is already pretty good (on this particular question). I only skimmed through the zero donors briefly, and I may go through in more detail in the future, or someone else can do it, but I found that a pretty substantial majority of the zero donors were either students or on a “low income” based on my quick informal and pretty conservative coding of people as “low income” if they were on roughly the UK minimum wage or less. I would guesstimate at least around 70% were full time or “low income” by this measure. But I then went through counting those who had donated a significant sum in the past (roughly $1000 or higher) or had pledged more than 10% in the future, and again, this was a majority, including some people (roughly 10) who weren’t in the student/low income group, so yet more were students or low income or pledged 10% or previously donated substantial amount.
I also extended this analysis to the people pledging <$500 but more than $0, and the figures were even more overwhelming: by my count roughly 90% were students or low income.
I’m being conservative given the rough nature of my coding and counting, but I think these figures are still too low, because I didn’t count people who were on around $20,000 per year (which was quite a few, and still a lowish income), people who pledged 5% (which is still respectable) or just said something vague like “Yes” about future donations. Just to give a flavour of the pledges: a significant number were even higher than the GWWC pledge (i.e. for roughly every 2 people pledging 10%, within the zero donors, there was 1 pledging much more than that: 50% income, 90% income, everything above basic living expenses and so on). So far from being not-EAs at all, a lot of these people seem like exemplary EAs!
Is this is a typo? Do you mean “not full time” or not working or “full time students”?
Yeh, thanks for the spot, that is just a typo: it should be “full time students”