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    GiveWell Cost of Life Saved, 2031

    Created by mdickens on {{qctrl.question.created_time | dateStr}}
    Published by mdickens on {{qctrl.question.publish_time | dateStr}}

    Question

    GiveWell is a charity evaluator that recommends a shortlist of charities in the field of global development that have the greatest impact per marginal donation. Towards this end, they try to quantify the effects of different interventions by estimating a "cost per life saved" metric to compare them on.

    While they warn against taking these cost-effectiveness estimates literally, these estimates do give a guideline to which interventions are most effective and a rough idea of how cost-effective we should expect interventions to be.

    Over time, these estimates change; they might update upwards if all the most cost-effective interventions are fully funded by philanthropists or if they overestimated the cost-effectiveness of the top intervention, and they might update downwards if more promising interventions are found or if an existing intervention has more benefits than previously expected.

    How much will it cost to get an outcome as good as averting the death of an individual under 5, according to GiveWell's guess, at the end of 2031, in 2015 USD?

    This question will resolve as the lowest value for the field "cost per outcome as good as: averting the death of an individual under 5" in the latest publicly available version of Givewell's cost-effectiveness analysis spreadsheet using the default values. These values are given after accounting for expected leverage and funging.

    If GiveWell no longer reports a cost per life-saved equivalent by 2031, a best effort should be made to derive an effective cost per life-saved equivalent by applying GiveWell's 2019 methodology to its 2031 cost-effectiveness model. If there is no unambiguous way to do this, the question resolves as ambiguous.

    If GiveWell substantially changes how it picks top charities such that they are not comparable to the 2019 picks—for example, if GiveWell chooses existential risk organzations as its top charities—the question resolves as ambiguous.

    A similar question for 2021 was asked here, it is still open as of this question's writing.

    Similar questions asked for previous years would have resolved at (all in 2015 prices):

    • 2016: $890
    • 2017: $823
    • 2018: $617
    • 2019: $592
    Categories:
    Social issues – Charities

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