by GiveWell, from Giving 101
We understand the sentiment that "charity starts at home," and we used to agree with it, until we learned just how different U.S. charity is from charity aimed at the poorest people in the world.
Helping people in the U.S. usually involves tackling extremely complex, poorly understood problems. Many popular approaches simply don't work. Many more approaches have simply never been investigated, beyond the stories and anecdotes.
In the poorest parts of the world, people suffer from very different problems. A child may die of malaria for lack of a $10 bednet, or of diarrhea for lack of a 5-cent packet of nutrients.
The table below illustrates the difference, comparing U.S.-focused charities to international charities.
Organization |
Cost |
Impact |
|
Developing-world health |
Against Malaria Foundation |
Approximately $3,400 per life saved |
Improve health, save lives |
Early childhood care and education (U.S.) |
Nurse-Family Partnership |
$10,000 per child served |
Increase academic performance and reduce criminal behavior |
US Education |
KIPP |
$7,500-$17,000 per student per year (including state funds) |
Improve academic performance |
Employment Assistance (NYC) |
The HOPE Program |
$10,000 per client served |
Unclear, if any |
We estimate that it costs the Against Malaria Foundation approximately $3,400 to save a human life. This includes transportation, administration, etc. Compare that with even the best U.S. programs: the Nurse-Family Partnership and KIPP both cost over $10,000 per child served, and their impact is encouraging but not overwhelming.
This is not to say that developing-world aid is easy or simple. Some activities are highly proven and cost-effective; others have very poor track records. As in the U.S., generating evidence of impact (not just stories) is essential.
Part of Introduction to Effective Altruism
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The problem is that international charities are also tackling complex, poorly understood problems. Charities like AMF oversimplify these problems since the donors will generally never visit the actual people that they are donating to, and therefore will never realize all of the harm that AMF has ignored and failed to measure. Local charities have greater accountability, since the people that are being served can actually be connected to the donors. When the only data we have is from the charity itself, it is easy for the charity to ignore the long term harm, and only measure the short term impact. Here's the full argument