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Comments
Have you looked in detail at any birth control initiatives?
I would have thought that, at least in theory, the cost benefit in terms of freedom of choice and poverty alleviation relative to the cost of the drugs that this would have the potential to be a competitive cause area.
Given you don’t have any in your top charities I expect this intuition is wrong, but I’d be interested to know why.
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for your question! We are actively considering funding programs that increase access to modern contraception in low- and middle-income countries. This may include programs that deliver family planning services and contraceptives to communities with limited existing access, or mass media campaigns that try to address misconceptions about contraceptives.
As you likely know, GiveWell relies heavily on cost-effectiveness analyses to decide which programs we recommend funding to. In order to assess the relative cost-effectiveness of family planning programs, we need to estimate the value created by increasing contraceptive uptake so that we can compare the benefits created by funding family planning to the benefits created by funding other programs.
Our initial estimate is that programs counterfactually providing a year of modern contraception (that is, contraception usage that wouldn’t otherwise occur for a woman in a low- or middle-income country who wants it) for less than $20 would meet our cost-effectiveness threshold. However, we’re highly uncertain about this because it requires difficult judgment calls and several empirical uncertainties. Given our uncertainty, we’ll also consider programs above this cost as we explore family planning programs.
Our Top Charities Fund supports our Top Charities, programs that we’ve estimated to be very cost-effective and in which we have a high degree of certainty according to our criteria. Because family planning is a funding area with high uncertainty, potential grants would come from our other giving funds. We’re planning to publish our initial report on valuing contraception in the next month.
great, thanks for getting back
What is a recent estimate of the marginal cost per marginal life saved for the Top Charities Fund?
For that recent period of the Too Charities Fund, what is an estimate of the odds or probability that one marginal USD would save a marginal life?
Suppose marginal cost per marginal life saved of 6000 USD.
Is 1:6000 approximately the odds of one more USD to save one more life?
If not, what is a tip for quickly estimating reasonable odds of one more USD donated?
Hi Ethan,
Thanks for this question! Our current estimate for the marginal cost per life saved through the Top Charities Fund is approximately $8,000, but this is sensitive to inputs like what fraction of the benefits are lives saved (versus increased later-life income or reduced morbidity, for example), the ages of the people whose lives are saved, and the possibility of funging. Because of these variables, the actual cost might range from roughly $5,000 to $10,000 while still meeting our 8x cost-effectiveness threshold for Top Charities grants.
When we estimate a marginal cost of $8,000 per life saved, this translates roughly to a probability of 1:8,000 that one additional dollar saves one additional life. For quickly estimating the odds of one more dollar saving another life, simply take the reciprocal of the cost-effectiveness figure. So if our cost per life saved is $8,000, then the probability is roughly 1/8,000 (or 0.000125).
However, this doesn’t mean that the chance for each dollar to save a life is exactly 1 in 8,000. Rather, it means each dollar contributes a small fraction (1/8,000) toward saving lives in expectation. If we roughly model this mathematically (using a Poisson distribution), the probability that donating $1 saves at least one life is approximately 0.000125. But if you donate the full $8,000, the probability of saving at least one life is about 63% (not 100%), with some chance you might save multiple lives, averaging out to one life saved in expectation.