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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.