I’m starting full-time at GiveWell today largely because I can’t think of a bigger problem that needs solving than poor, African children dying from a handful of diseases that we, in the developed world, cured/dealt with half-a-century ago ( e.g., diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, and pneumonia). So, we no longer have to solve the difficult problem of understanding what causes, say, malaria and what methods work to reduce its incidence. We only have to solve the relatively easy, logistical problem of providing that care.

Although there are a lot of problems in the world (from “charitable” problems like inner-city education in the New York City to “business” problems like the method use by most renters to rent an apartment through a random smattering of under-informed, ill-mannered brokers), I can’t think of any others that have the absurd implementation simplicity to impact that this one does.

One of the things I hate most is, for lack of a better term, is “badness.” I’m talking less about “evil” than general incompetence and failure: things that make no sense for no good reason. Well, I don’t just hate this – I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that thousands of children die everyday because they don’t have a $5 net under which to sleep, a 5 cent pill when they contract diarrhea, or other similarly inexpensive items that you or I take for granted.

Children die because they don’t receive care that costs as much as my morning cup of coffee? How could that be true? How can I let that be true?

On a more personal/emotional note: Last Monday, my father went to the funeral of a childhood friend of his who passed away from cancer. On the phone that night, he told me how sad the funeral was: this relatively young woman left her husband, two children, and her mother (who was planning to move in with her daughter that day). Every time I think of a young person dying, I’m struck by how uniquely tragic that particularly event feels. Then, I think about how many similarly tragic events occur daily. Each four year-old girl who dies of diarrhea is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s friend. Each thirty year-old man who dies of AIDS is someone’s father, someone’s son, someone’s friend. I want to fight that. I want to reduce that suffering. I want to save those lives, especially because saving them is just not that hard.

Researching Cause 4 has been frustrating. On one hand, I immediately ran right into a pretty terrific overview of what’s known about how to improve high schools. On the other hand, I have a couple burning questions that I’m struggling to answer, and I’d appreciate any thoughts.

1. How does the achievement gap break down by year in school?

What I’d really like to know is what % of students is below grade level in reading and math as of each year (entering K, entering 1st grade, etc.), broken down by income (and race, if possible). I’ve seen scattered statements along these lines, but what I’m describing seems so essential for deciding where intervention is most needed.

2. What’s the connection between education and later life outcomes?

Initially, I hadn’t planned to spend much time on this question – it seems intuitively obvious that a college education leads to much more opportunity than a high school diploma, which in turn is much better than dropping out. But as I look through reports like the one above, I’m starting to question whether targeting academic performance is the same as targeting better outcomes. For example, it looks like one of the best ways to improve test scores is through extremely intensive instruction … is someone’s likelihood of becoming a doctor rather than a drug dealer really more impacted by their knowledge of math after having it drilled into them, or by, say, mental health? (I’d still guess that it’s the former, actually, but I’d like to see some evidence – especially because I’m trying to decide on the relative value of getting dropout risks through high school vs. getting non-dropout risks ready for college.)

This is a response to the Giving Carnival topic I posted a couple days ago.

I’m passionate about all of the 2007 Clear Fund causes, and about many others as well, but the one that revs me up the most is inner-city education in wealthy societies. The reasons for this are complicated and tough to unravel, but here goes. This cause appeals to my:

• Universal-humanitarian values. Although the Clear Fund is focusing for now on NYC, I have never felt anything more for the people who share my geography or religion or ethnicity than for the people who don’t. (And if someone I care about suffers from a particular disease, it makes me want to fight suffering, not fight the disease.)
• View of the good life. Gotta be brief about this one. I don’t value happiness, or even the absence of pain, as much as most people do. What I really value is giving someone the opportunity to reach their full potential as a world-shaper, not just -citizen; I want people to experience, learn from, compete with, or even be the best in the world at what they care most about. I see value in things like hospice care and the Make-a-Wish foundation, but they excite me way less than enabling a life with no ceiling. And even though you can save an African life for much less than a U.S. one, I think a true shot at all the opportunities the world has to offer is easier and even cheaper to provide in the U.S.
• Desire to make a real, short-term, definite difference. I’d love to help invent a great cure or technology, or a new version of capitalism where everything is perfect. But no matter what the “expected value,” I can’t stomach the idea of pouring everything I have into one giant losing bet, and failing to impact a single person’s life for the better. We might not have the formula for helping kids succeed, but at a minimum, giving them more supportive adults to interact with is going to make a difference in someone’s life, statistically significant or not.
• Desire to work on a large-scale problem. Despite the smack I’ve talked about “root causes,” I also can’t be 100% satisfied just exchanging dollars for lives. I believe that well-spent charity in this area will support organizations that are trying new things and documenting them; we may never get “the answer,” but we’ll be learning from our mistakes and creating more knowledge about programs that can be replicated at other charities and even possibly by the government. To me it’s a great compromise between tackling a grand problem and helping individuals, because unlike a purely political endeavor, you’re building evidence as you go – and the evidence is real people really helped.
• Wish to fight bad guys. Sure, malaria and diarrhea are bad guys, but this cause, for me, has a much more human and tangible (and thus detestable, and thus motivating) bad guy as well. It’s the people who believe that economics is justice, that our current society is perfectly fair, and that – by implication – the hordes of poor/unproductive/criminal people in the inner city must be that way because they were born that way. People who think this aren’t just being hypercapitalist; they’re logically committed to racism too, since the achievement gap persists as a racial phenomenon even when you control for economics.

  My hatred for these people goes back to childhood, when I loved Les Misérables and couldn’t believe that the smug suburban sheep around me thought they actually deserved to be better off than Jean Valjean. I desperately want to see them be wrong, and I don’t need a worldwide revolution for this to come about. Every poor minority student who grows up to be a successful businessman/politician/writer is one more slap in the face of people who think the world as of 2007 is a reflection of justice.

• Beliefs about race issues. Some feel that racism is the true “root cause” of the achievement gap, and that may be true, but I think it also works the other way around. As long as certain communities (particularly black ones) are held back from the start, they’re going to end up less successful and more criminal than the rest of us, and that just encourages the people (the same jerks from above) who look for reasons to write them off as inferior. Again, every person helped is another salvo in this battle.

A lot of the above isn’t in our criteria, because it isn’t strictly in line with our declared values, and it isn’t strictly rational. I shouldn’t care about proving jerks wrong, for example; I should just care about helping people. But I’m human, and what motivates me isn’t quite that simple, and I can be honest about that and still do my job well. I hope others will participate in similar fashion.

This blog is hosting the Giving Carnival this week. The Giving Carnival is a horrible name for the following: the host chooses a topic, anyone who wants to writes/submits a post on that topic, and the host posts links to the ones he wants to (in a space this small, generally everyone) with commentary. It’s like a periodical, but with the advantage that it’s much more of a pain in the neck to read. Get pumped!

This week’s topic is: what charitable cause are you personally most passionate about?

Cancer research? Feeding the homeless? Fighting malaria?

Are you a US kinda person? Or global? Or Topeka, KS?

Please post a comment to this post by midnight of 8/4/07, either linking to your post or containing your response. If you have your own blog, link to your post and include a summary. If you don’t, or want to be anonymous, or just don’t want this on your blog, you can fully participate by comment. I will publish my own roundup the next week, but this way everyone will be able to see the unedited version.

A few requests:

1. Get personal. Whatever “hats” you wear at your organization or as a blogger, take ’em off, along with your clothes. Tell us what you care about and why.
2. Be specific. I’m sick of debating things in the abstract like “Should nonprofits make every effort to run as efficiently as possible, while also leaving room for their human side?” No. Next time, maybe. This time, I want to learn something about you and your values.
3. Fundraisers: please participate! You chose your organization – and with it, your cause – over every other choice in the world. Why? What drives you? If your answer ends up being a plug for your organization, that’s totally fine. Just be personal about what excites you, not what excites others.
4. No meta-charity or other copouts. Don’t talk about a cause centered on getting others to give more or give better. (I won’t be talking about GiveWell.) I know that technically answers the question, but it won’t be about your values. So if you do work for one of these organizations, write about your favorite sub-cause that your cause helps fund.

Can you tell I’m worried about cop-outs? I think people in this space love to say things that “can’t be argued with,” and they also have a tendency to talk about what we can sell rather than what we should sell. For this carnival/thing, I want you to put your personal values right out there in the open. I want to see passion, values, your bleeding heart laid bare. If there’s some professional reason you can’t do this, just participate anonymously (via comment). (And all non-bloggers are invited to participate via comment as well.)