I have the intuition that with a volatile dollar price it doesn’t always make sense to donate to EA recommended charities and perhaps donors could allocate better their donations by donating locally
1. Actually, if you’re from a poor country and use the current TLYCS calculator, you likely have to be rich for them to recommend you to donate a significant portion of your income.
2. I have mixed intuitions here, maybe someone could better disentangle them: a) if my currency vs. U$dollar exchange rate goes from 1:2 to 1:4, my donations apparently lose half of their value; b) however, if this movement is global (because exchange rates markets overvalue U$ dollar, due to the uncertainties caused by the pandemic), then probably the currency in the countries receiving aid will drop, too—so, on average, everything remains the same; c) due to recession, people donate less, thus saving money to donate later may have a cyclical effect.
EA recommends policy careers but I suspect that it’s an even more important path in LMICs, where policies are weaker, policymakers are even less evidence based and where institutions have a lot more potential to improve.
I totally agree with that. But LMICS have their own peculiarities and serious governance issues; for instance, I haven’t found 80kh advice on public policy that is applicable to someone beggining a civil service career in Brazil. It’d be probably impactful to find organizations with more local expertise.
I won’t convince my friend’s uncle to donate to Against Malaria but I could convince him to donate to a colombian charity
I don’t know how much it scales, but in Brazil, Doebem offers to tranfer donations to GiveWell charities (AMF, GD and SCI), and also to Brazilian charities recognizedly transparent and that have had their impact previously evaluated by international researchers (though not with the same rigor of GW). Besides, they have experimented with direct transfers during the pandemic.
On the other hand, in LMICS, I think many people are often suspicious of local charities they don’t have direct contact with, and might be more trustful of foreign recognized charities—with established reputations and rigorous evaluation. For example, when I talk about GD, people usually say “great idea”; but when I mention doedireto, I face all kinds of questions: “how can you ensure the money gets to the right person? or that they won’t spend in drinks? etc.” This is not unjustified, considering the bad rep the charity sector may have in some circles.
I wonder if there is a bias when EA talks about problems not being “neglected” enough when dismissing some cause areas or focus topics
1. I think “neglectedness” is actually a proxy to assess the expected marginal impact of and additional contribution to a cause - . So, it might not be applicable to causes advocating for systemic change, where you should perform some sort of tipping point analysis instead. On the other hand, the true problem here is: how do you evaluate charities / projects aiming for systemic change?
2. This might lead to a selection bias—we’ll end up focusing on projects that might be easier to evaluate; this is often compared to that joke where an economist searches for her keys under the lightpost because that’s the only place she can see. I think most people working with charity evaluation in EA are aware of that; on the other hand, requiring no evidence would likely lead to bad incentives, and you still need some evidence to assess the opportunity costs of a project.
3. I actually think improving women participation in LMIC governments (and leading positions in general) would be a good cause precisely because (epistemic status: guess based on anecdotal experiences and some light readings on organizations and management) it would improve institutional decision-making (besides, of course, mitigating discrimination). It would be interesting to see a more profound assessment of this area.
I think the calculator you mentioned is kinda… broken. I notice that the local cost of living is ignored and no recommendation is given for incomes under $40,000 USD (or rather the recommendation is “we recommend giving whatever you feel you can afford without undue hardship”). A “well-paying” job in a LMIC is usually below $40,000/year. My highest gross income ever was about $100,000 CAD, and for this they recommend a 1% donation. Nah, I’ll stick with 10%+ thanks. You have to make over $83,000 USD for the recommendation to inch past 1%.
Thanks for the post. My comments:
1. Actually, if you’re from a poor country and use the current TLYCS calculator, you likely have to be rich for them to recommend you to donate a significant portion of your income.
2. I have mixed intuitions here, maybe someone could better disentangle them: a) if my currency vs. U$dollar exchange rate goes from 1:2 to 1:4, my donations apparently lose half of their value; b) however, if this movement is global (because exchange rates markets overvalue U$ dollar, due to the uncertainties caused by the pandemic), then probably the currency in the countries receiving aid will drop, too—so, on average, everything remains the same; c) due to recession, people donate less, thus saving money to donate later may have a cyclical effect.
I totally agree with that. But LMICS have their own peculiarities and serious governance issues; for instance, I haven’t found 80kh advice on public policy that is applicable to someone beggining a civil service career in Brazil. It’d be probably impactful to find organizations with more local expertise.
I don’t know how much it scales, but in Brazil, Doebem offers to tranfer donations to GiveWell charities (AMF, GD and SCI), and also to Brazilian charities recognizedly transparent and that have had their impact previously evaluated by international researchers (though not with the same rigor of GW). Besides, they have experimented with direct transfers during the pandemic.
On the other hand, in LMICS, I think many people are often suspicious of local charities they don’t have direct contact with, and might be more trustful of foreign recognized charities—with established reputations and rigorous evaluation. For example, when I talk about GD, people usually say “great idea”; but when I mention doedireto, I face all kinds of questions: “how can you ensure the money gets to the right person? or that they won’t spend in drinks? etc.” This is not unjustified, considering the bad rep the charity sector may have in some circles.
1. I think “neglectedness” is actually a proxy to assess the expected marginal impact of and additional contribution to a cause - . So, it might not be applicable to causes advocating for systemic change, where you should perform some sort of tipping point analysis instead. On the other hand, the true problem here is: how do you evaluate charities / projects aiming for systemic change?
2. This might lead to a selection bias—we’ll end up focusing on projects that might be easier to evaluate; this is often compared to that joke where an economist searches for her keys under the lightpost because that’s the only place she can see. I think most people working with charity evaluation in EA are aware of that; on the other hand, requiring no evidence would likely lead to bad incentives, and you still need some evidence to assess the opportunity costs of a project.
3. I actually think improving women participation in LMIC governments (and leading positions in general) would be a good cause precisely because (epistemic status: guess based on anecdotal experiences and some light readings on organizations and management) it would improve institutional decision-making (besides, of course, mitigating discrimination). It would be interesting to see a more profound assessment of this area.
I think the calculator you mentioned is kinda… broken. I notice that the local cost of living is ignored and no recommendation is given for incomes under $40,000 USD (or rather the recommendation is “we recommend giving whatever you feel you can afford without undue hardship”). A “well-paying” job in a LMIC is usually below $40,000/year. My highest gross income ever was about $100,000 CAD, and for this they recommend a 1% donation. Nah, I’ll stick with 10%+ thanks. You have to make over $83,000 USD for the recommendation to inch past 1%.