Join us for a discussion about tradeoffs in global health and development funding. Please listen to or read the materials beforehand!
Description
Recently, GiveWell announced it's expanding its focus on livelihoods programs—economic development interventions that increase people's incomes and purchasing power. Until now, EA organizations like GiveWell have often prioritized health interventions because their analyses suggest that health programs were more cost-effective than programs that increase people’s incomes.
However, these analyses rely on controversial assumptions about the moral weight of different outcomes: saving lives, preventing disability, and increasing incomes. Accordingly, changes in these moral weights could meaningfully shift which interventions EAs should prioritize.
Please join us for a discussion about these issues, facilitated by Rethink Priorities Senior Researcher, Laura Duffy. We will tackle questions such as:
How do organizations like GiveWell calculate these moral weights?
What might be the implications for program design or donor decisions if we assign more value to promoting income gains?
What other outcomes deserve moral consideration in cost-effectiveness analyses, and how might we measure them?
Before attending, please either:
Listen to GiveWell's podcast episode on the livelihoods programs (31 min), or
Read this explainer on moral weights.