Giving What We Can's blog, featuring the latest news from our community.

Stay up to date with Giving What We Can's blog. Featuring the latest news about our community, how to donate effectively, charity evaluation, community events and more!

Blog

footerNavigation

About us

Contact us

Our team

Our values

Our members

Our events

Our mistakes

Transparency

Careers

Donate to Giving What We Can

About

Our best charities

Take a giving pledge

Get involved

Make a bequest

Videos, books, podcasts

FAQs

Sitemap

Learn more

Press kit

Media coverage

Case studies: People who pledge to give

Media

Footer Navigation

topNavigation

Recommended charities

High-impact causes

Why give to funds

How much to donate

Why donate publicly

Recommendations

Comparing charities

Choosing a cause

Inclusion criteria

Trusted evaluators

Our approach

Videos, books, podcasts and essays

Myths and misconceptions

How rich am I?

Can money buy happiness?

Resources

Research

Team

The Pledge

Trial Pledge

Further Pledge

Bequests

Why pledge

Pledges

Newsletter

Podcast

Videos

Sharing our ideas

Events

Giving games

Charity elections

Pledge drive

Fundraisers

Community

Donate now

Best charities

Manage my donations

Tax deductibility

Donate

My pledge

My donations

My income

My impact

Pledge

My giving

Top Navigation

Larissa Hesketh-Rowe

Last weekend I attended the Effective Altruism Global conference in Oxford. This was the third in a series that saw events in Melbourne and at the Googleplex in California. These events were the biggest in Effective Altruism’s short history.

Even a week later my mind is still buzzing with all of the fascinating things I learnt, my inbox and Facebook feed are going crazy with messages from the great people I met and I’m trying to keep up with all the exciting projects I could make a difference in.

This means I could probably write at least another ten blog posts based around things I got out of the conference. But today I want to share with you a simple yet powerful message. If you care about helping others and making a positive impact in the world then what you need to do is quite straightforward.

All photos by Lauryn Vaughan of [Not Purple. Creative](https://www.facebook.com/notpurple23)

Michelle Hutchinson, the Executive Director of Giving What We Can, provided the perfect opening to the conference by summarising the simple assumptions that bring us all together.

And when we say help people we mean anyone and everyone.

This means we expand the circle of people and issues we care about until we realise that everyone, all around the world has similar hopes and fears.

Michelle shared a personal story. I will do the same.

I’ve had a lot of experiences with cancer in my family. We’re very fortunate that my mum survived breast cancer, although it was hardly easy and I’m not sure I was much help being a sullen teenager at the time. My dad has had a scare and my grandad died of cancer a few years ago. So I have taken part in several fundraisers to beat cancer; night walks around London, my first 5k, bake sales and many more.

What I eventually came to realise however is that it’s not the cancer in of itself that is the evil here, it’s the suffering and loss. Strokes can cause heartache and pain. So can malaria. So can starvation.

I don’t want the people I care about to suffer any of these.

I would only wish to swap one condition for another in any of my loved ones if I thought it would bring them less pain and keep us together longer. So now I try to just tackle as much suffering I can. I raise to beat suffering and loss in whatever form.

Having had this realisation it didn’t take me long to realise if I cared this much about my mum, other people probably care just as much for their mothers. And for their fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, children and friends. People everywhere, from the north of the UK suffering from leukemia to in a village in Malawi fighting against malaria. They all care and feel this pain just like I do. So I want to help them, whoever or wherever they are.

For many people, myself included, this also extends to animals. Many studies have shown 

 and even without that we can certainly see that 

 much as newborn babies can, so we should worry about their suffering too. One thing that I was impressed by at the conference was that there was such an emphasis on vegetarian and vegan food because so many people there cared about animal welfare. Never before have I been to a conference where the organisers felt the need to put a note to say they were sorry that the biscuits were not vegan – and I’m an event coordinator, I go to a lot of conferences!

It was lovely to be at an event where everyone wanted to help as many people and animals as they could, as much as they could.

Using reason, conducting research and analysing statistics.

The more we understand what causes these and many other problems the more we can do to help. This means we need to measure impact, look at statistics and explore areas no one else is looking at.

Toby Ord gave a fascinating example. Research has demonstrated how effective antiretroviral drugs are in tackling HIV Aids. But in terms of preventing deaths from the disease, promoting the use of condoms is many times more effective. And, thinking again of wanting to prevent suffering rather than any one disease, we can save many more lives again by tackling malaria. Treating malaria providing anti-mosquito bed nets through the Against Malaria Foundation is the best intervention we have found.

So we can use research and scientific reasoning to help more people, to figure out how to do 

Reason doesn’t just help us identify the most effective causes but also biases in our own thinking that might cause to focus more on evidence that supports our existing viewpoints.

To help us with finding these things out there were some really interesting workshops at the conference run by the 

 on how to find biases in your own thinking and how to better understand very different points of view. One workshop I particularly enjoyed was learning to argue from an opposing point of view to see where you might be wrong.

One stand out message of the conference was the importance of humility.

Changing your mind just means you’ve learnt something new. When you think like this it is easier to learn and be accepting of others.

Shared community and acceptance was a really powerful feeling of the conference for me. In many ways the people there were very different. People from countries, working in very different areas (from computer engineers based in the USA to health workers working in the global south) and focusing on different causes (from animal welfare to helping people become more rational). All united in trying to do the most good possible.

Unfortunately I will say a more general diversity was still lacking. The audience was predominantly white collar, white males between the ages of 18 and 30. This was an open topic of discussion at the conference. Particularly, does this lead to biased optimism on things like getting into politics or running start ups?

That said, the atmosphere was very supportive and inclusive. Although the the sessions were intense, it felt like a very safe space. Everyone was on your side.

The conference had the strange feel of a group interview day - but much more friendly. On the one hand I met lots of people, many of whom were hiring into Effective Altruism organisations, looking to collaborate on new projects or giving advice on how to make an impact. And yet instead of pushing personal skills and hoarding contacts, everyone was sharing tips and contacts, and offering to volunteer to support promising ideas.

For me this community feeling was optimised by the lovely delegation from Norway letting me crash with them when I missed the last train to where I was staying one night. I think I was too engaged in discussing how to make an impact through politics and learning about the latest developments in computer science!

Figuring out how to do the most good doesn’t stop with finding a more effective cause.

Maybe you can help find the most effective ways of treating malaria. Or maybe you can come up with a model of how to stop diseases spreading through populations.

Maybe you can influence governments to put more money into research or into tackling malaria or into building the health infrastructure needed in the countries where malaria is prevalent.

Or maybe you can persuade more people of the amazing impact they can have on so many people’s lives if they just think about how to do the most good. Maybe you persuade some people to fund anti-malaria bednets, some people who can influence government policy and some who can research how to do all of these things even more effectively.

I attended a fantastic workshop with Giving What We Can’s own Jonathan Courtney, Director of Outreach, where I collaborated with people from around the world who run local groups. We try to reach out to people in our own towns and cities so that we can discuss together how we can do the most good and then support each other in doing it.

This is one of the ways I feel that I, personally, can make an impact.

Once you've worked out what cause area you can have the biggest impact in and how, it's just a case of doing it.

 of things to do after the conference, whether you attended or not. And 

 you can find small steps anyone can take to get started.

One of my big learns was you don't need to have all the answers now. Don't stall on doing something good because you're not sure it's the best thing. 

At EA Global Oxford one powerful session was an EA hamming session. A hamming session simply challenges an individual to answer the question: : 

what would be the most impactful thing you could do in your field?

And then once you have an answer you get the question; “Okay, so why aren't you doing that?”

We then brainstormed all the things we would like to do. All the things we could do that would make a difference. We made a list of obstacles and then worked through in pairs possible solutions to each one. From there we worked out what our plan was for at least the next few months and what we needed to make it happen.

What could you being doing? What are the next steps?

One of the suggestions from yet another powerful session, this one 

's talk on self control was to make a pact with someone to do something.

I've made a pact with a lovely person I met at EA Global, to reach out to someone with experience working in effective non-profit organisations. This will help me identify whether I would be a good fit for that kind of role and what skills I might be missing. From there I can plan ways to get additional experience.

I have high hopes that the things that I have learnt at the EA Global conference will stay with me for a long time. I have learnt about a wider range of causes that are worth supporting, I met some lovely, brilliant people and gained the tools and renewed excitement to go out and make as much difference as I can.

What's your next step in figuring out how to do the most good and then doing it?

Whether you're figuring it out, or taking the next step on your plan. 

Let's make a pact together to do the most good we can.

EA Global Oxford: Figure out the most good you can do and then do it

Per-Erik Milam

 recently identified taxes on tobacco as, “the single most cost-effective way to save lives in developing countries” (2015, p.1).

 This is a strong claim and one that should pique the interest of any effective altruist. Is the claim true? And, if so, does tobacco taxation present an opportunity to do the most good? In this post, I examine whether tobacco tax advocacy gives other highly effective interventions a run for their money. However, this post will not evaluate or recommend a particular charity. My aim is rather to assess whether tobacco tax advocacy is a cause that effective altruists and EA organizations should investigate further and, if so, where further investigation is needed.

The WHO assesses global progress on tobacco control in terms of a set of measures called 

Monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies

Enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship

Tobacco control programs often pursue many of these aims at once. However, raising taxes appears to be particularly cost-effective — e.g., raising taxes costs $3 - $70 per DALY avoided(Savedoff and Alwang, p.5; Ranson et al. 2002, p.311) — so I will focus solely on taxes. I will also focus only on low and middle income countries (LMICs) because that is where the problem is worst and where taxes can do the most good most cost-effectively.

None of this is to say, of course, that we should not pursue other tobacco control measures.They are well-studied and effective life-saving interventions. In fact, there is some evidence that advertising bans and public smoking bans can be highly cost-effective (Lai et al. 2007 and Donaldson et al. 2011).

How effective is tobacco taxation as a public health intervention?

It’s clear that smoking is a health risk. As Savedoff and Alwang note, non-smokers live 10 years longer on average than smokers (Jha et al. 2013, p.347); smoking can kill up to two thirds of smokers (Banks et al. 2013); and smoking greatly increases the likelihood of 

coronary heart disease (2-4x), stroke (2-4x), and lung cancer (25x) (CDC 2014).

 ( A recent study of US smokers found that 17% of deaths attributable to smoking were caused by diseases not previously linked to smoking (Carter et al., 2015). The implication of this finding is that we may have been significantly underestimated smoking deaths.) The WHO estimates that in the 20th century 100 million people died as a result of cigarette smoking (Jha 2012, p.469).

What does this mean for the future? If current trends in population growth and tobacco use continue, smoking will cause 1 billion deaths in the 21st century, the vast majority of which will be in the developing world (Savedoff and Alwang, p.3; Jha 2012 p.570).

But current trends need not continue. We can prevent deaths from tobacco use. Tobacco taxation is a well-tested and effective means of decreasing the prevalence of smoking—it gets people to stop and prevents others from starting. The reason is that smokers are responsive to price increases,provided that the real price goes up enough. According to one estimate, preventing smoking deaths by raising the real price of cigarettes by 10% costs $3 - $70 per DALY (Ranson et al., p. 315). Another estimate puts the cost of saving a life by diminishing tobacco use at $1462 (5.5millions lives saved over 10 years at an annual cost of $804 million dollars). If 1/3 of the lives saved are due to price increases from higher taxes, which probably underestimates the relative impact of this measure, then the cost of saving a life by raising taxes is about $795 (1.8 million lives saved over 10 years at an annual cost of $143 million) (Asaria et al., 2007, pp.2047-8 and Web table 7).

Even if these numbers are off by a factor of 2 or 3, tobacco taxation appears to be on par with the most effective interventions identified by GiveWell and Giving What We Can. For example, 

GiveWell estimates that AMF can prevent a death for $3340 by providing bed nets to prevent malaria and estimates the cost of schistosomiasis deworming at $29 - $71 per DALY.

At first glance, then, tobacco taxation seems like an obvious choice for those looking for cost-effective public health interventions. But does its initial attractiveness stand up to scrutiny?

There are a few reasons to balk at recommending tobacco tax advocacy to those aiming to do the most good with their donations, time, and careers.

Tobacco taxes may not be a tractable issue

Tobacco taxes may be a “crowded” cause area

Unanswered questions about the empirical basis of cost-effectiveness estimates

 I don’t have a charity to recommend. If, at the end of this post, you’re convinced by the cost-effectiveness of tobacco tax advocacy, there won’t be a donation link for you to click. However, I will have a few things to say about how effective altruists might make a difference in this area.

Importance, tractability, and neglectedness

Even if tobacco taxes are as cost-effective as their proponents suggest, and even if there were a charity capable of effectively advocating for tobacco taxes, we might still have reason not to support or recommend it. When deciding whether to support a particular cause, we typically assess the proposed project along three dimensions: importance, tractability, and neglectedness (or crowdedness).

Yes, definitely. Smoking is very harmful and very common.

 Globally, 21% of people over 15 smoke (WHO GHO). In the developing world, it causes more

 deaths each year than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined (Savedoff and Alwang, p. 4). Preventing even a fraction of the deaths, disease, health costs, and other economic losses caused by smoking would be an enormous benefit. Tobacco control, especially tax increases, could prevent at least 110 million

 smoking deaths in the next few decades (

 Jha 2012, p.591). By comparison the eradication of small pox, one of the most effective public health interventions in human history, has saved upwards of 50 million lives since the campaign concluded 35 years ago. Well-designed and well-managed tobacco taxes have been shown to decrease smoking, and, once established, tobacco tax revenue can be used to support further tobacco control measures or other public health programs.

Is tobacco taxation a tractable intervention?

This question is more difficult to assess, but the available evidence is promising. Many rich countries and various US states have substantially reduced smoking prevalence through taxation. This took quite a while in some places—30years in the US and UK—but was much faster in others. For example, France cut its smoking rate in half between 1990 and 2005 by using tax to steadily increase the real price of cigarettes. And South Africa, a middle-income country, was able to do the same over a similar period (Jha and Peto 2014, pp.64-65).

However, there is one powerful reason to think tobacco taxation might not be a tractable intervention. The tobacco industry and its agents directly and indirectly oppose tobacco control measures, including taxation. They lobby governments, spread misinformation, and bring costly lawsuits against governments that attempt to control tobacco use (see e.g., Mamudu et al. 2008 and Sebrie at al. 2006 ). 

And other organizations do the same on their behalf.

 As a result, organizations that advocate for tobacco taxes not only have to design and build support for effective tobacco taxes, but also help defend the policies against the tobacco industry’s attempts to block, dismantle, and neuter them. In addition to this kind of direct opposition, tax advocates may find themselves operating in places where the institutions needed to establish and maintain the tax system are weak, dysfunctional, or corrupt. Such factors and others may explain the (relative) absence of “global level policy prescriptions” and the “lack of public involvement in tax-related policies” noted by Uwe Gneiting (2015, pp.9-10). Finally, some countries may be parties to international agreements that, in practice, limit their ability to defend the legality of tobacco taxes even when these taxes are morally and politically justified.

Nonetheless, even if we acknowledge these obstacles, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the tractability of tobacco tax advocacy.

There are many venues within which to advocate tobacco taxation. Advocacy efforts can focus on city, state, or national governments. And researchers have identified 23LMICs that together account for 80% of the world’s chronic disease burden, in which to pursue tobacco control measures (Asaria et al.).

Tobacco control is an active cause area in which opposition and obstacles are being overcome.

In most countries a majority of people support increased taxes, especially when some of the revenue is used to improve domestic health programs ( 

There is an existing tool—excise taxes that sufficiently raise the real price of cigarettes—

 that can be applied and that is is known to work. In fact, almost all LMICs—121 of 132,for which we have data—already levy excise taxes on tobacco. The problem is that very few levy sufficiently high taxes—i.e., taxes that constitute 45-75% of the retail pack price(WHO Report, pp.78-79).

The political context—increasing taxes and reforming tax systems to make them more effective—is amenable to incremental change, e.g., 106 countries increased their excise taxes between 2012 and 2014 (WHO Report, p.79), including this recent tax increase in 

We have data on the strength of target countries’ tax and regulations systems and tobacco control infrastructure that can allow organizations to target governments most likely to pass and enforce effective taxes (Asaria et al., Webtable 3).

Large donors are currently funding tobacco tax advocacy in 112 countries and their 

successes and failures can inform future advocacy (Gates and Bloomberg).

Successes in places like the Philippines, in the face of tobacco industry opposition,

 suggest that well-funded advocacy can work, though rigorous evaluation of the cost and cost-effectiveness of these efforts is still needed.

Tobacco tax might seem like an intractable issue, but this concern is not borne out by the evidence.

This question is difficult to answer, but my sense is that it is neglected. As I said above, tobacco control is underfunded relative to the harm it causes (Eriksen et al., pp.76-77; use the Savedoff chart on relative funding). HIV/AIDs prevention and treatment received 10 times more funding in LMICs than tobacco control despite the fact that tobacco causes 3 times more deaths in those countries. (Of course without that funding the number of HIV/AIDS deaths would have been much higher, but proponents of tobacco taxes are not suggesting that we divert funding from AIDS to tax advocacy. They are arguing that we ought to fund tobacco control in order to save lives.) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies have recently begun to fund tobacco control at a higher level ($600 million since 2007). And, given the extent of this funding, one might reasonably suggest that tobacco control is not a neglected cause. If it remains cost-effective to increase funding, Gates and Bloomberg will do it. If this is true, then our money would be better spent elsewhere.

However, I am not persuaded that tobacco control is as crowded as these critics suggest. Even accounting for Gates’ and Bloomberg’s contributions, tobacco control is underfunded relative to the harms caused by smoking. Nor is there much evidence to suggest that there is not room for more funding. Hana Ross and Michal Stoklosa consider the possibility that Gates and Bloomberg might be “crowding out” other Development Assistance for Tobacco Control (DACT). After 2006, when Bloomberg and Gates committed to funding tobacco control, some other organizations reduced or ended their funding. However, this drop in funding might be due instead to the effects of the global financial crisis (Ross and Stoklosa 2012, pp.468-469). More evidence is needed to establish both the effects of the financial crisis on DACT and the effects of these large donors on both DACT and domestic funding for tobacco control.

The academic research seems to suggest that spending more would be highly cost-effective. Gates and Bloomberg have contributed $600 million since 2007. This represents about half of total DACT (Ross and Stoklosa, p.466). However, one estimate of the amount needed for the four “best buys” in tobacco control, which includes tobacco taxation, is $600 million 

 (or $0.11 per capita per year) (Eriksen et al., pp.76-77). Another estimate puts the cost of decreasing smoking prevalence in key LMICs to 5% by 2040 at $6 billion per year. Tobacco control accounts for about 10% of those costs, or $600 million per year (Beaglehole et al. 2011, pp.1440 and 1444). Finally, if we think that the estimated costs for advocacy are too low, then these numbers will be even higher.

At the very least, these numbers suggest that the amounts of money currently moved by 

GiveWell ($27 million as of April 2015), which includes the amount moved by Giving What We Can

), could all be used effectively for tobacco tax advocacy.

Should we be satisﬁed with the cost-effectiveness numbers cited by Savedoff and Alwang and others? Perhaps, but effective altruists interested in supporting tobacco tax advocacy, or tobacco control more generally, should consider the following questions.

Would more funding allow us to decrease smoking prevalence more quickly at the same level of cost-effectiveness?

Tobacco consumption decreases by 4% for every 10% increase in price (Savedoff and Alwang, p.4), so if additional funding would achieve higher tax increases over the same time period, it would do even more good. However, we want to know not only whether additional funding will do more good, but also whether cost-effectiveness will change? Does achieving a 20% increase in price costs twice as much as achieving a 10% increase within the same time period? Or does it cost half or 4 times or 10 times as much? We need to know the answer to this question.

How would cost-effectiveness estimates change if we assumed that some proportion of tobacco tax revenues would be used for tobacco control or other highly cost-effective public health programs?

Currently, LMIC governments collect $10.74 per capita in revenue from excise taxes on tobacco products, but spend only $0.0078 per capita on tobacco control—DACT provides another $0.011 per capita. This may well be justified. Directing just 1% more of these revenues (or $0.1074 per capita) to tobacco control would increase total spending on tobacco control by more than 500% (Eriksen et al., pp.76-77). Increasing funding in this way may diminish or even eliminate the need for additional DACT, including charitable donations, in the long term. But designing policies that directly fund domestic tobacco control or other cost-effective public health interventions could substantially improve the overall cost-effectiveness of tobacco taxes in the short term, while strengthening domestic public health services.

How would cost-effectiveness estimates change if we discount future lives in the way some economists and philosophers suggest?

First of all, time discounting is a controversial moral question. Second, at least one of the estimates given above discounts projected future DALYs at the standard 3% rate (Ranson et al., p.314). Moreover, even if we accept such a discount rate, increasing tobacco taxes has both short term benefits (for those who quit smoking) and long term benefits (both for those who quit smoking and those who never start (Jha and Peto, pp.63-64). Indeed, Asaria et al. estimated that 5.5 million lives could be saved in the next decade (this estimate was for the period from 2006-2015).

Are the proposed tobacco taxes regressive—i.e., does their burden fall primarily on the poor?

This is an important question and a natural one to ask given that we’re proposing taxes in LMICs on a product used mostly by the poor. However, the evidence strongly suggests that the tax is not regressive. Savedoff and Alwang point out that while poor people smoke more thanafﬂuent people, they are also more sensitive to price increases. This means they are more likely to smoke less or quit in response to price increases. As a result, most of the health beneﬁts of tobacco taxes will accrue to low-income individuals, while most of the tax burden will be born by richer smokers who continue to smoke even when the price has increased (Savedoff 

and Alwang, pp.8-9, Jha et al., 2012, p.8

Do current estimates accurately assess the cost and cost-effectiveness of advocacy for tobacco taxation?

This is the crucial question for effective altruists interested in donating to tobacco tax advocacy. Organizations funding tobacco control pay for political advocacy, institutional support, and research and they advocate for tobacco taxes by lobbying and advising politicians and civil servants. Thus it is crucial that we have an accurate estimate of the cost of personnel and material resources necessary to complete a successful campaign. However, it is often difficult to measure the effectiveness of political advocacy ( 

 ), specifically whether and to what degree the campaign 

 And, even when we can measure its effectiveness, we may not be justiﬁed in generalizing from one context to another—e.g., a successful campaign in Thailand might not be successful or might cost much more in Nigeria. However, rather than generalize, researchers calculate program costs based on general WHO estimates and the strength of a country’s tax and regulation systems and then total the costs for each country (Johns et al. 2003, Asaria et al., Webtables 3 and 7).Nonetheless, if we were to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a particular organization, we would quite reasonably ask for more concrete numbers based on actual past campaigns. This seems particularly important given that tobacco tax advocacy is likely to experience direct opposition from tobacco industry agents (Ranson et al., p.314). And it seems reasonable now that large,outcome-focused donors have funded a number of successful campaigns.

At the beginning of this post, I asked whether tobacco taxes can really claim to be one of the most—or even 

 most—cost-effective way of saving lives in the developing world. I think we have good reason to think they are, though we should ask for answers to the above questions—or at least better answers than I’ve been able to give.

I also asked whether tobacco tax advocacy provides an opportunity to do the most good with our time, careers, and charitable donations. Unfortunately, with regard to donating, the answer seems to be no—at least for now. The Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies currently provide almost all the charitable funding for tobacco control. It is not possible to donate to Bloomberg Philanthropies. You can donate to the Gates Foundation, but cannot direct your donation to tobacco control. You can donate to some of the tobacco control organizations that these large donors support, e.g., the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, but robust evidence of the effectiveness of these organizations’ particular advocacy efforts is currently unavailable. Tobacco taxation may indeed be the most cost-effective way to save lives in the developing world, but it’s not a good option for individual donors at this time.

Blog

EA Global Oxford: Figure out the most good you can do and then do it

Is tobacco control a "best-buy" for the developing world?

An Update on Project Healthy Children

An Update on Project Healthy Children — Part II

Doing Good Better: Review

The SDGs - could we become the generation that eliminates extreme poverty?

My Journey to Taking the Giving What We Can Pledge

Words and Deeds

How Long Will it Take Economic Growth to Eliminate Extreme Poverty?

7 Tips for More Cost-Effective Giving