Agreed with a lot of the points you’ve made here. I really liked the point about different geographic regions where there may be extremely high poverty. Some of the poorest Indian states have population sizes and poverty levels comparable or worse than that of some of the poorest African countries. Of course, there are many EA organisations in India, but there may be similar regions in other countries where EA is less active.
One of the potential challenges of doing projects in different countries is a lack of EA resources and networks in those regions, so initial costs may be high. Also, entering policy roles could be challenging if you’re the only one promoting an EA-type mindset, and it could lead to burnout or frustration if you’re unable to make change
One concrete idea to try to reduce some of these uncertainties could be to research opportunities in a country, which could both help you determine the best opportunities in your country, but also help others in a similar spot.
Conducting expert interviews on those promising cause areas to understand the ways you could contribute to this cause area. These could include people working in industry, policy, or NGOs. Questions you could ask experts.
Reading up existing research on your country, if any exists. Organisations like JPAL and CGD have done research on the Global Health & Development/IIDM side for a number of countries.
The biggest challenge with this type of reserach is evaluating the impact such roles have, but this is broadly true for many EA roles.
Hi Vaidehi, your reply got me thinking and I have a couple of questions (I´ll put it here in case somebody else has an answer). So… for people in middle or low income countries that want to pick a career to do the most good, should we focus on global problems or is it a good idea to find country-level or regional-level focus areas in terms of their importance, neglectedness and tractability? I suspect that there are some considerations such as our opportunity to reach higher-level positions in our countries vs somewhere else. For example, I imagine that if someone from Brazil wants to improve institutional decision making it would be easier for him/her to improve Brazil’s executive branch than finding a path where he/she could improve US institutions (even if US politics could affect more people due to its higher influence).
Do you think that 1. zooming in to country-level or region-level cause areas could help EA identify more accurately priority paths worldwide? and 2.do you think more impact could be achieved if people from different countries find their comparative advantage to focus on their own regions?
Hello, I’m Brian, co-founder of EA Philippines. I think it’s a good idea for EAs from non-US / UK countries to do some cause prioritization and career advice research to help determine what are the high-impact career paths for people from your country. And for people doing this, I think it’s good to list both global and more regional/local problems, as well as find local roles to solve these local/global problems.
So yes, I think zooming in to country-level or region-level cause areas could help EA identify more accurately priority paths worldwide. I also think more impact could be achieved if people from different countries find their comparative advantage to focus on their own regions.
EA Philippines’ cause prioritization and career advice research is currently housed in this Google Sheet. It’s still very much a work in progress, and I’m unsure of whether to show this publicly at this early stage, but I think even just the framework and structure of the Google Sheet would help people in figuring out how to get started on this work themselves and how to list various causes, roles, and organizations.
I’m thinking that it would be relatively smarter for EAs in low-income countries to work in local nonprofits, compared to those in high-income countries who are relatively more effective by earning-to-give. Does that sound right to you?
However this does require that a suitable nonprofit job be available in your country! I just checked the 80000 Hours job board and found that the total number of jobs in the “biggest impact” category in Low-Mid Income Countries was 15, versus 336 jobs in the (less populated!) first world. It could well be that there are fewer EAs in LMICs, but probably not 22 times fewer.
Thanks a lot Brian! I´m impressed by EA Philippines haha your achievements are great and I love to see how this is being done in different countries. I wonder if global priorities would be different (and how) if many countries did something like this. Good luck with that research but so far it looks very interesting and replicable in other countries haha thanks a lot.
Wow! Thanks a lot Vaidehi, this is so helpful. The prioritisation part looks like a great starting point. I´ll check it out carefully and think more about this. Probably discussing this with people from similar countries could bring up great new ideas and cause areas where we could have that comparative advantage. Thanks for those links and for your insightful reply!
Agreed with a lot of the points you’ve made here. I really liked the point about different geographic regions where there may be extremely high poverty. Some of the poorest Indian states have population sizes and poverty levels comparable or worse than that of some of the poorest African countries. Of course, there are many EA organisations in India, but there may be similar regions in other countries where EA is less active.
One of the potential challenges of doing projects in different countries is a lack of EA resources and networks in those regions, so initial costs may be high. Also, entering policy roles could be challenging if you’re the only one promoting an EA-type mindset, and it could lead to burnout or frustration if you’re unable to make change
One concrete idea to try to reduce some of these uncertainties could be to research opportunities in a country, which could both help you determine the best opportunities in your country, but also help others in a similar spot.
Doing high-level cause prioritisation on how your country may have a comparative advantage making traction on a particular cause area. Some thoughts on an MVP for cause area research.
Conducting expert interviews on those promising cause areas to understand the ways you could contribute to this cause area. These could include people working in industry, policy, or NGOs. Questions you could ask experts.
Reading up existing research on your country, if any exists. Organisations like JPAL and CGD have done research on the Global Health & Development/IIDM side for a number of countries.
The biggest challenge with this type of reserach is evaluating the impact such roles have, but this is broadly true for many EA roles.
Great points. I feel like there’s a rule of thumb somewhere in here like ‘marginal dollars tend to be low information dollars’ that feels helpful.
Hi Vaidehi, your reply got me thinking and I have a couple of questions (I´ll put it here in case somebody else has an answer). So… for people in middle or low income countries that want to pick a career to do the most good, should we focus on global problems or is it a good idea to find country-level or regional-level focus areas in terms of their importance, neglectedness and tractability? I suspect that there are some considerations such as our opportunity to reach higher-level positions in our countries vs somewhere else. For example, I imagine that if someone from Brazil wants to improve institutional decision making it would be easier for him/her to improve Brazil’s executive branch than finding a path where he/she could improve US institutions (even if US politics could affect more people due to its higher influence).
Do you think that 1. zooming in to country-level or region-level cause areas could help EA identify more accurately priority paths worldwide? and 2.do you think more impact could be achieved if people from different countries find their comparative advantage to focus on their own regions?
Hello, I’m Brian, co-founder of EA Philippines. I think it’s a good idea for EAs from non-US / UK countries to do some cause prioritization and career advice research to help determine what are the high-impact career paths for people from your country. And for people doing this, I think it’s good to list both global and more regional/local problems, as well as find local roles to solve these local/global problems.
So yes, I think zooming in to country-level or region-level cause areas could help EA identify more accurately priority paths worldwide. I also think more impact could be achieved if people from different countries find their comparative advantage to focus on their own regions.
EA Philippines’ cause prioritization and career advice research is currently housed in this Google Sheet. It’s still very much a work in progress, and I’m unsure of whether to show this publicly at this early stage, but I think even just the framework and structure of the Google Sheet would help people in figuring out how to get started on this work themselves and how to list various causes, roles, and organizations.
I’m thinking that it would be relatively smarter for EAs in low-income countries to work in local nonprofits, compared to those in high-income countries who are relatively more effective by earning-to-give. Does that sound right to you?
However this does require that a suitable nonprofit job be available in your country! I just checked the 80000 Hours job board and found that the total number of jobs in the “biggest impact” category in Low-Mid Income Countries was 15, versus 336 jobs in the (less populated!) first world. It could well be that there are fewer EAs in LMICs, but probably not 22 times fewer.
Thanks a lot Brian! I´m impressed by EA Philippines haha your achievements are great and I love to see how this is being done in different countries. I wonder if global priorities would be different (and how) if many countries did something like this. Good luck with that research but so far it looks very interesting and replicable in other countries haha thanks a lot.
Agreed with much of Brian’s comment, and I’ve also PMed you to discuss more. (If others are interested, please reach out!)
Wow! Thanks a lot Vaidehi, this is so helpful. The prioritisation part looks like a great starting point. I´ll check it out carefully and think more about this. Probably discussing this with people from similar countries could bring up great new ideas and cause areas where we could have that comparative advantage. Thanks for those links and for your insightful reply!