I think EA is missing education as a priority. Here are the best reading on the subject.
Education and Health: Redrawing the Preston Curve Wolfgang Lutz Endale Kebede
Global Sustainable Development priorities 500 y after Luther: Sola schola et sanitate Wolfgang Lutz
Hunger and Public Action by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze
all of them freely available online to read
the FATAL failure of Give Well is its lack of understanding of the importance of education and the WILFUL turning of blind eye to UNDP HDI.
Aaron,
I have written a lot about education on this forum. See this old post of mine
Education is one of many things you can do with your time
I am talking about basic education here (12 years). A child going to school is not losing family time, they are learning and playing with their friends at school. If there are not at school they might be looking after siblings, grazing the animals, or maybe doing nothing.
See GiveWell:
Givewell’s research on education is of really poor quality. Partly that is because they assume education has no intrinsic value and hence put little effort into it. Partly it’s hard to disentangle effects of education because those effects last a lifetime, and can easily be mis-attributed to income, government policy, soap operas, economic policy etc...
regard their own education as a major source of intrinsic value, apart from its effects on other life outcomes?
The question of intrinsic and extrinsic value is not very interesting. We can ask why does health have intrinsic value? Income it is clear has no intrinsic value. UNDP considers Income, education, health to be equally important, because they allow us to leads lives that we want to live i.e. enhance human capability. See Capability Approach
UNDP considers education an intrinsic good, absent other effects on welfare. But I’m willing to bite the bullet and ask whether UNDP is actually right.
Given the importance of HDI, the research backing HDI (kerala model), the people who created it (Mahbub ul Haq, Amartya Sen +others). The starting point for any moral weights has to be HDI, we can differ from it but need really solid explanation for substantial deviations from HDI. The burden of proof is on the EA community and especially Give Well.
After 30 years of HDI, the major changes are Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), Gender Development Index (GDI), Gender Inequality Index (GII), Multidimensional
Poverty Index (MPI)
In all of those indexes education is given equal importance to health and income. The persistence of education for 30 years in HDI and the newer indexes points to the importance of education.
Moral Weights of Education, Income, Health according to UNDP HDI
from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/hdr-technical-notes
18 years of education = 1 life (85 years)
9 people doubling of income per capita for their entire lives = 1 life
or
765 years of additional income = 1 life
Give Well weights are wildly off from this.
They were driven by government policy, the policy was around changes in the schooling system + whatever changes were needed to encourage kids to go to school. The changes had NOTHING to do with “increase the returns to schooling” as Pritchett wrongly asserts.
Were these increases typically driven by public demand
This is really hard to tell. If there are no schools in walking distance of your village and hence no one goes to school does it mean there is no demand? If you live in an authoritarian country and know that the dictator will not build schools, and hence no one demands schooling. Is there no demand?
In the case of Kerala, Singapore local governments did all they could to encourage schooling. As a result enrollment increased. Does that mean there was an increase in public demand? (Edit: The governments of Kerala, Singapore also built the schooling system: building, teachers, books etc...)
Disentangling government action vs public demand is not so important. There are good practices from Singapore, Kerala etc… that can be learnt by governments the world over.
Quotes from the papers
Even more particularly, government policies that increase the returns to schooling
will be key to raising the demand for education.
FALSE. See Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Mauritius, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Indian state of Kerala. All of these places had increases in schooling before increased economic returns.
Lots of people ask why EA isn’t very focused on education (or any number of other causes).
Education is one of 3 parts of Human Development Index, the other being Income and life expectancy. The fundamental and FATAL problem of the EA community is not giving education equal importance as the other parts of the HDI.
Here I am talking about INTRINSIC value, as an end in itself like life expectancy.
The EA community and Give Well have never published moral weights for education vs money or life expectancy. They have chosen to disregard UNDP and HDI. I wonder is the UNDP part of the outgroup?
Try reading the following
“Lots of people ask why EA isn’t very focused on education (or any number of other causes).”
“Lots of people ask why EA isn’t very focused on life expectancy (or any number of other causes).”
“Lots of people ask why EA isn’t very focused on income (or any number of other causes).”
All of the above sound crazy to me, all of them are big buckets and issues. The lack of acknowledgement of the importance of education is the issue.
Whether there are “smart buys” in education is a secondary issue. The research might find cost effective charities working in any combination of income/life expectancy/education or exclusively in one of them.
The starting point has to be acknowledging the importance of education.
Linch we can also use HDI (Human Development Index) and calculate education ~= money
Here is what I get for children’s education
6 years schooling = 890 PPP USD per year
9 years schooling = 2800 PPP USD per year
12 years schooling = 8500 PPP USD per year
Linch, Can you explain. What did not survive the test of time?
High fertility and death rates are normal for illiterate societies, this has been the way we lived for 1000′s of years. The way to low fertility and low death rates is via basic education.
-Social movements (eg Fair Trade, Black Lives Matter, drug reform/prison reform movements)
I have been part of a few. Those perspectives are really useful.
· Global poverty that isn’t health. I’d like to see a handful of people in EA with expertise in, for example, climate policy, or education charities, or energy poverty in a developing world context.
Education and Human Development Indicators are something that EA needs to pick up.
No takers so far. As can be seen from the votes on my comments.
After spending more than half a billion dollars, and potentially directing more than 100 millon dollars every year. EA community has no understanding of why HDI was created, and has no answer for why Education was dropped.
“Global health and development” = HDI—Education
It is not a question of money, it is a question of Diversity and Inclusion.
My hypothesis is that if humanity really understands how the world works then the problems can be solved easily, otherwise we will keep putting effort into less effective ways, sure EA is more effective but it still has far to go, the deficit in EA is not money it is understanding.
Thanks trammell. I notice that only you told me why, I assume I got 5 downvotes at a minimum.
While not directly on topic, giving more is about bigger impact, if D&I is poor EA impact is worse. That’s why I responded. My thinking is that money is not the constraint an understanding or lack of it is the constraint in improving the world. For which EA needs open hearts and minds, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism
hey, interesting post. i dont think EAers should beat themselves up about how much they donate or not donate. anybody who gives 10% for EA has done more than 99.99% of humanity, that is worth a good nights sleep with a clear conscience.
However the EA community should ask, if they are missing a cause priority. Why EA won’t talk about race, gender, intersectionality etc.. EA will be more effective if those lenses are used. Likewise diversity in EA is poor, the papers and experts referred to are western, with little representation of voices from people around the world. The just concluded EA Global is a good example of this, even “Global Health and Development” track featured two people from the USA.
“Global Health and Development” itself is problematic framing, the UN via UNDP has published the Human Development Index, EA should be at a minimum focused on Human Development Indicators and not arbitrarily decide according to their biases.
(To people who want to downvote please explain why)
Answer from Elie Hassenfeld source
Q) On Gender Inequality, reproductive health, etc., GiveWell hasn’t done much work on this. Do you see gender equality as having intrinsic value? What are your thoughts on women’s empowerment?
A)
We’re broadly consequentialist in the giving that we do—focused on the direct impact on the world
We take that utilitarian perspective rather than the philosophical value of justice or helping the least
Focusing on equality per se has not been a focus for that reason
We could treat this differently by seeing gender inequality as an intrinsic value, rather than just an instrumental value.
Within the broader framework, we could treat it as an intrinsic value
It’s been a major challenge to weigh different good outcomes that charities do
Some charities improve health, some improve well-being
We try to solve this by using moral weights, to compare the good achieved by different charitable outcomes
These are things that we don’t have the right answers, and our approach to answer these have evolved over time
We used to take the median of what staff believe, to IDInsight to hear from beneficiaries on what they value
We now have a part of our team assigned to these questions, to decide which outcomes would have intrinsic weight
On reproductive health specifically, we’ve looked into that, and we couldn’t find charities that are competitive with our top charities
That’s still in the scope of where we’ll look into
Interesting replacing “thing X” with “basic education” reads as follows
My four-fold “smell test” for what is important to development
I have a four-fold criteria for whether something is potentially an important determinant of development, or more narrowly, just economic growth, and I am happy if “basic education” that I am proposing is “good for development” can satisfy all four (and then can move on from these simple facts about potential importance to tease out complicated questions of proximal, distal, and reverse causality).
One, countries differ in their level of development by an order of magnitude. Countries that are developed should have more of basic education than countries that aren’t. If Denmark and Canada don’t have more of basic education than Mali or Nepal I am kind of suspicious.
Two, since now developed countries are almost an order of magnitude more developed than they were in 1870 I am happy if there is more of basic education in developed countries now than 140 years ago. If Germany and Japan don’t have more of basic education (or at least the same amount) than they did in 1870 I am kind of suspicious.
Three, since over the period since 1950 some countries have seen their development improve incredibly rapidly and others have seen almost no progress I am happy if basic education is more prevalent in rapid development successes than in development failures. If Korea and Taiwan don’t have more of basic education than Haiti and Nigeria then I am kind of suspicious.
Four, since countries change in their pace of development (and this is particularly true of economic growth, less so of human development indicators) dramatically over time, I am happy if there is more of basic education in a country in periods when development progress is rapid than in periods when development progress is slow. If China doesn’t have more of basic education after 1978 than before 1978 (as growth accelerated by 3.3 ppa) or if Cote d’Ivoire doesn’t have less of basic education after 1978 than before 1978 (as growth decelerated by 3.7 ppa) then I am kind of suspicious.
Basic education easily passes the first 3 tests. The final one also passes, with a time delay of 20 years (which is roughly the time it takes a kid to go through school and start working.)
human development indicators
good to see Lant Pritchett give a nod to human development indicators (and indirectly to the human development index)
accumulation of human capital, technological change, capability in the product space, or “institutions” (or, more deeply, what is cause and what is consequence amongst these elements themselves).
Good to see that room is left for human capital to be a cause and not merely a consequence, as most in EA seem to think
But nearly all contenders in debates about economic growth or development
Good to see subtle acknowledgement that “economic growth” and “development” can be different.
As a starting point EA should think from a human development standpoint, and not silently drop education from the definition of development.
Developing countries are very patriarchal, e.g. China, India have a distorted gender ratio at birth, women/girls lag in access to health care, education, power etc..
Given this, as far as I know GiveWell charities don’t have a gender lens, neither do your reports talk much about gender.
Do you think a gender focus would be useful? If yes, why has this not been done.
If not, then why not?
Thanks Aaron. I try not to assume anything, and usually ask for clarification. I should have done the same here.
My fundamental disagreement with the EA community in on the importance of basic education (high school equivalent in USA)
Thanks for the link.
Health and Education … Three out of those five are already front and center in EAs’ awareness anyway
According to drawdown Health and Education is mostly about basic education (high school equivalent in USA) and access to contraception. Contraception is a minor issue that EA correctly pays little attention.
Education on the other hand is given very little attention in EA, and is the critical factor in human well being. Sadly a big miss by EA.
Health, nutrition and education improvements also have positive impact on GDP growth, not just the other way around
Precisely. This is the story of Kerala, China (pre-reform)
If you are going to downvote me , then explain why. I got 5 downvoters leading to −14 negative score. So whoever downvoted me are big shots on the forum. Check your privilege and power.
EA community and Givewell biggest failure is not understanding the importance of education.
There is a related problem of over valuing money. Which shows up in recommendation of Give Directly.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and its most important index Human Development Index (HDI) needs serious engagement, not silent dismissal.
The dismissal of UNDP HDI is a perfect example of systemic racism of the WEST against others.