In a previous blog post, we described how we use cost-effectiveness analyses when deciding which charities to recommend to donors.
Today, we published a report that discusses how GiveWell and other actors, such as governments and global health organizations, approach one of the most subjective and uncertain inputs into cost-effectiveness analyses: how to morally value different good outcomes.
When we started GiveWell, we were very interested in cost-effectiveness estimates: calculations aiming to determine, for example, the “cost per life saved” or “cost per DALY saved” of a charity or program. Over time, we’ve found ourselves putting less weight on these calculations, because we’ve been finding that these estimates tend to be extremely rough…
Two notes on this post: This post discusses flaws in a particular published cost-effectiveness estimate for deworming. It should not be taken as a general argument against deworming as a promising intervention, and it does not address various other publications on deworming including the 2003 paper by Edward Miguel and Michael Kremer. Prior to publication,…
Elie thinks that fistula is worse than death. jsalvati disagrees. I’d rather bring someone to full health than save an infant’s life. Ryan agrees, but Basti does not and Ron Noble emphatically does not. It’s possible that we would all agree if we knew more about the lives of people in the developing world, or…
Coming across the current feature on the DCPP’s home page reminds me of how much I care about the issue of obstetric fistula. The following are highlights from the article linked above (emphasis mine): For countless women in developing countries, going into labor is the painful beginning of a lifetime of unremitting shame and misery…
Previously, I outlined the basics of the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) metric. It takes the approach of converting all health burdens into equivalent “years of healthy life lost”: a year of blindness is counted as .6 lost years, a year of severe malnutrition is counted as .053 lost years, etc. This post discusses two common…