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Raffi Grinberg

Although my friend has not yet found the love of his life, he once sought counsel from a female friend on his idea for a future marriage proposal: “Would you find it romantic if we met at an empty field in a poor African village, I got down on one knee and said, ‘With the money I could have used to buy you a beautiful diamond ring, instead I funded the construction of a new school in this empty field’?”

She responded: “If you got down on one knee and said, ‘With the money I could have used to fund the construction of a new school in this empty field, instead I bought you this beautiful diamond ring’—now 

I often joked about my friend’s plan, but somehow the idea always sparked interesting conversations with my fiancée Charlotte. When we decided to become engaged this year, we decided to forego an expensive diamond. Instead, I bought a more affordable ring from a vintage store, and donated the difference between that and one month’s salary to GiveDirectly, one of GiveWell’s highest-ranked charities.

Most friends and family supported the decision, but it was met with some hesitations. I hope that by answering the most common questions we’ve received, I can explain the reasoning behind this decision—and hopefully convince you that a “donation diamond” could be the right decision for other couples as well.

If you don’t spend at least one month’s salary on a ring, won’t everyone think you’re cheap?

Money is no substitute for love. Somehow the archaic idea that “the more someone spends on you, the more he or she loves you” is still commonplace—even though once a couple gets married, they will often share their finances. (So that expensive gift your spouse-to-be just bought you is actually coming out of 

Isn’t a diamond ring the traditional way to show your love for your future wife?

Yes and no. Different cultures use varying types of jewelry to symbolize betrothal and marriage. The popularity of engagement rings (as a primary symbol of commitment) has traded back and forth with wedding band numerous times through history.

In 1930s America, when the use of diamond engagement rings was falling, the DeBeers cartel launched a pervasive advertising campaign to re-popularize them. Their slogan of “a diamond is forever” and the notion of spending one month’s salary were a part of that campaign.

Because of DeBeers’ global monopoly, they were also able to artificially inflate the prices of otherwise not-so-scarce diamonds.

If the premise of an engagement ring is so artificial, why bother with one at all?

Most cultural norms were invented by someone at some point in time, and the more important question is whether it’s worth buying into them in order to be a part of that culture. Mother’s Day may have been manufactured by the greeting card industry to increase their revenue, but I still think it’s nice that everyone gets their mother a card on the same day. (And when I say everyone, I’m forgiving my occasional lapses in calendar memory.)

Charlotte and I believe in the value of commitment, and in the ability of symbols to enhance that commitment by putting it on display for others to see. There’s something beautiful about observing a type of ring and automatically knowing that its wearer will soon vow to preserve her love.

In other words, it’s certainly worth investing some money for a durable symbol of our commitment. We just decided that hundreds of dollars was a more reasonable price range than thousands for that particular symbol—then used the remainder for something more valuable than a signifier.

And maybe, if enough people take on the idea, charity can become the new signifier.

Why is charity so valuable, if most charities use their money ineffectively?

Luckily, there has been a lot of research on this topic (check out the rest of the Giving What We Can Blog).

Each year, GiveWell ranks the world’s most transparent, cost-effective charities. As an example, GiveDirectly aims to deliver almost 90 cents of every dollar you give directly to the people who need it most.

Isn’t it impossible to find a ring that is both beautiful and durable for less than one month’s salary?

Not only is it possible, it’s actually pretty easy. Many vintage stores sell previously-worn jewelry at great prices, including diamonds. Our particular ring is from the 1900’s. If it’s already lasted one hundred years and still looks great, we figure it can go a hundred more.

And Charlotte often reminds me that “vintage is in now,” or something like that.

So should I not buy a new iPhone, because that’s also a “waste” of money?

I’m not trying to convince you to donate every spare dollar you have. I have an iPhone, too. I “waste” my money on take-out meals, on an online subscription to Netflix, and most recently on a battery-powered perpetual motion machine entitled 

 that spins in mesmerizing circles. However, I would hardly qualify these things as waste—even though other people might be able to spend that money on more essential items, they make me happy. (How can one put a price on 

It’s not worth doubting and questioning every purchase you make, because that takes a lot of fun out of life. If an engagement ring makes you happy, I’m not asking you to deny yourself that pleasure.

I’m just asking you to think about whether it’s the expensive diamond that makes you happy, or what it signifies. And if it’s the latter, to think about whether there might be a better way to signify the same thing.

Show each other what your love can do for the world.

Why I spent a month's wages on charity, not an engagement ring

Allan Saldanha

As someone fortunate enough to have never wanted for anything all my life, I've always struggled with the degree of absolute poverty of so many people in the developing world. The world bank's poverty line is just $1.25 a day (adjusted for purchasing power that too), but there are still an estimated 600 million people below this line.

I've often made donations to charities targeting poverty like water aid, but I knew that I should be donating more, and was also keen unsure as to the impact of my donations. I then read about Toby Ord and Giving What We Can in the papers, and was really impressed with both the clear thinking behind the concept and the generosity of Toby and the other members. I had always looked for charities with low administration costs but Giving What We Can showed me that it is obviously the outcomes that are achieved that matter, and that a charity may need to spend money on distribution and monitoring of its projects to achieve the most good. Most importantly, Giving What We Can and other charity evaluators quantify the health benefits of donations using QALYs, which showed me how much my money could achieve. The fact that donations to AMF save a healthy life for just $2,300 puts it into perspective for me. The saying from the Talmud that 'whoever saves one life saves the whole world' encapsulates for me the value of life because as a parent I know that my children mean the world to me. As an investment banker who earns well above the national average, I find it inspiring that so many people on lower salaries than me are so generous with money and time, so I decided to take the pledge.

I am also very keen on match fundraising. Not only does it increase the amount of money raised, it also involves collaborating with other people and psychologically makes people feel better about the money they donate. To that end- I've set up the matching page below on AMF where I match any donations raised up to a total of £2500 (i.e. to raise a total of £5000). So please donate and make twice as much of a difference- many thanks for your generosity.

http://www.AgainstMalaria.com/DoubleYourDonation

How to double your donation to AMF

Jacob Williamson

Over the past two weeks I have interned at Giving What We Can and conducted research on the problem of child marriage. This blog post offers a summary of 

, detailing my main findings and overall impression of the problem. I focus on child marriage’s destructive effects and some promising interventions.

An estimated ten [1] to fourteen [2] million girls - females aged under eighteen - are newly married each year. According to estimates by the United Nations Population Fund, by 2021 there will be over fifteen million newly married girls each year [3] Child marriage is a leading impediment to achieving six out of eight 

Child marriage is clearly complex, but we can understand the two main causes in terms of economics and culture. Giovanna Lauro and Margaret E. Greene explain:

In low-income families, the lack of economic alternatives contributes to the practice, as marriage to an older man may be seen as bringing economic security – for the girl and sometimes for her entire family. […] In a broader sense, the acceptance of marrying a girl as a child is part of a cluster of social norms and attitudes that do not value the human rights of girls [5].

 of Girls Not Brides insists that child marriage is the key to addressing a whole cluster of issues, from education, maternal death and infant mortality to the spread of HIV, gender inequality and poverty [6]. And the evidence backs her up.

For instance, a twenty-nine country study on the effects of child marriage on education found that:

[A] woman's age at first marriage is positively related to her total years of schooling; in all 29 countries, women who married when they were 18 or older had more education than those who married at a younger age. The starkest difference was in Nigeria, where women who were at least 18 when they married achieved, on average, 9.3 years of schooling, while those who married before they were 18 remained in school for only 2.5 years [7].

By abruptly ending a girl’s education, child marriage also increases child mortality rates. A cross-national study showed that:

In 9 countries the highest rates [of child mortality] occurred among mothers with no education. […] Education of mother, followed by education of her husband and his occupation were generally the strongest explanatory variables [8].

A further major cross-national study estimated the impact of education on fertility, estimating that "doubling female secondary school enrollment (from 19 to 38 percent) in 1975 would have reduced the total fertility rate in 1985 from 5.3 to 3.9." [9].

Education also makes girls "considerably less likely to die in childbirth and thereby orphan their children with deleterious consequences." [10].

Child marriage’s bad economic effects through ending education is similarly well-established [11]. Strong evidence also exists concerning its impact on domestic and sexual violence [12], child welfare [13] and women’s political activity [14].

Fortunately, effective interventions to prevent child marriage do exist.

For instance, programs that empower girls with information, skills and support networks to enable self-advocacy are promising [15]. An Ethiopian program called 

 did this, and participants were nearly three times more likely to be in school than non-program participants, and were 90 percent less likely to be married [16].

Also promising are programs that provide economic support and incentives to girls and their families to keep them in education rather than marrying early. The 

 tried this approach, and participants were 40 percent less likely to marry after one year than girls in the control group [17]. This intervention is particularly interesting because it is simple and scalable.

Less fortunately, I have been unable to identify any promising charities that work in this area. One reason for this is that child marriage is worked on primarily by private foundations such as Nike and Ford, and states like India.

. These projects empower girls with information and skills to enable self-advocacy. In this respect they resemble the successful 

 program. However, none of the projects involve the conditional cash transfers which were found to be promising. It is also unclear how transparent the programs are, whether they track their effectiveness and whether they do more than only indicate how donations could be spent.

Still, it seems that child marriage as a cause overcomes two out of three hurdles. The problem is certainly significant enough, and effective interventions exist. If good charities working to prevent child marriage can be found, such charities should be taken seriously as giving opportunities for now or in the future.

Marry me later: Preventing child marriage and early pregnancy in India

Ending child marriage in a generation: What research is needed?

Solutions to End Child Marriage: What the Evidence Shows

Santhya, K. G. and Annabel Erulkar. 2007. ‘

Supporting Married Girls: Calling Attention to a Neglected Group

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 2012. "

Lauro, Giovanna; Margaret E. Greene. 2013. "

The girl effect: The ripple effect of ending child marriage.

Protecting Young Women from HIV/AIDS: The Case Against Child and Adolescent Marriage,

’ International Family Planning Perspectives 32(2): 79-88.

Hobcraft, J.N., J.W. McDonald and S.O. Rutstein. 1984. 

Socioeconomic factors in infant and child mortality: a cross-national comparison.

" Economic Development and Cultural Change 44 (1): 105–28.

Chaaban, Jad and Wendy Cunningham, 2011. ‘

Measuring the Economic Gain of Investing in Girls: the girl effect dividend

Early Marriage, Marital Relations and Intimate Partner Violence in Ethiopia

International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health

 39(1) (March): 6-13; Santhya, K., Ram,U., Acharya, R., Jejeebhoy, S., Ram, F., & Singh, A. 2010. 

Associations Between Early Marriage and Young Women's Marital and Reproductive Health Outcomes: Evidence from India

. International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 36(3), 132-139. New York, NY: Population Council.

Bicego, George T., and J. Ties Boerma. 1993. "

Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries.

Girls Count: A Global Investment and Action Agenda

My categories are from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) & Girls Not Brides, 2013. "

Solutions to end child marriage: summary of the evidence

Child marriage: Why does it happen and what can we do?

Parmeet Shah

I studied some philosophy at university, and first came across Peter Singer’s work there. I’d always wanted to work out what the point of life was, and how I could help the world, so these ideas naturally resonated with me.

I’ve always felt a little confused about what I should be doing. My family owns a large real estate business in India called Marathon Realty, so I’d assumed for most of my life that I would go into business. But I was also concerned about whether this was the best way to make a difference and help other people. When I spoke to 80,000 hours, Giving What We Can’s sister organisation, I learned about the prospective impact I could have by becoming a businessman and donating a lot to charity, which did a lot to reassure me in my choice of joining my family’s company.

I’m currently doing a masters in real estate development in the US, but will move permantly back to India in June to take over the family business. In the long term, I’d like to start up my own charity, preferably fighting depression, the area in which I’m most interested. Until I do that I will be donating to the charities Giving What We Can recommends. I am donating 50% of my income to charity, and I feel motivated by the thought that what I spend beyond basic necessities can save many lives if I gave it away.

Difficult decisions: How I'm using my life to help others

Peter Hurford

About 50% of the poor living in Indonesia, 72% in Cote d’Ivoire, 84% in Guatemala, and 94% in Udaipur report working multiple jobs in order to get their income -- typically one agricultural and one non-agricultural, though not always.

Most non-agricultural jobs involve self-employment as a business owner. Typically, a member of the poor household will migrate (about 60% of families), leaving for a median of one month to find employment in a nearby city. Others will perform a job earlier in the day, like selling food, and then go out and perform another job, like selling textiles, collect trash, or general labor.

Generally these entrepreneurial jobs done by the poor do not require skills. In Hyderabad, jobs of the poor breakdown to 17% general stores, 11% tailors, 8% fruit and vegetable sellers, 6.6% telephone booth operators, 6.3% milk sellers, and 4.3% auto owners. Of these, only tailoring requires a specialized skill that takes awhile to acquire.

Additionally, about 76% of the poor report at least one member of their household working for a public employment program. Many governments provide safety-net “food for work” programs, which entitle some days of physical labor under government employment at a pre-announced, low wage. Unfortunately, this kind of work is rare and is often given out in a way that discriminates against the poor.

Another interesting question is how the poor would spend additional money, if they got it. GiveDirectly, by giving cash transfers in $1000 chunks, has been able to find out. An informal survey conducted by them and shared with GiveWell found that 67% of the money spent went into home improvement (replacing a thatched roof with an iron-sheet roof), 9% went to other (like school uniforms or a motorcycle), 9% went to livestock, and 4% went to food. However, this survey was only in Kenya, and other areas might spend differently.

Typically, the poor don’t actually have access to a safe place to save money at a reasonable rate of return. Only 14% of poor households have a savings account (with the exception of Cote d’Ivoire, where the number is 79%). Even stashing cash in a pillow or a home doesn’t work well because of high inflation and rates of theft. Additionally, the poor, like everyone else, have problems resisting the temptation to spend money they have at hand, both when family members demand access to it, or when given the option to buy the same indulgences people in developed countries struggle to resist.

There also is little access to insurance. Less than 6% of the poor have access to any kind of health insurance. Generally, insurance is instead provided through friends and relatives as a type of loan exchange -- 75% of poor households report making loans, 65% report borrowing money, and 50% report both. The most common form of “insurance” to handle economic stress is eating less, taking children out of school, and foregoing medical treatment.

This lack of insurance or saving leads the poor to under-invest because they cannot accumulate financial assets, or afford to take risks. Poor families do not specialize in skills and they operate their businesses at a remarkably small scale. Poor families have access to very limited markets and infrastructure and suffer from a lack of access to credit.

Where do the extremely poor work?

, I explained about the living habits of the extremely poor.

One might expect that an extremely poor person is working as hard as they can just to survive, putting every penny earned toward food. However, this actually isn’t the case -- across the thirteen countries studied, food only accounted for 56% to 78% of the budget.

So what do the poor spend money on instead? Surprisingly, spending on education is very low -- typically about 2% of budgets. This is mostly because governments provide free schooling. In every country sampled except Cote d’Ivoire, at least 50% of boys and girls aged 7 to 12 were in school. Unfortunately, there’s mounting evidence that the state funded schools aren’t that good.

A lot of spending varies region to region, but a typical extremely poor person spends about 4.1% to 8.1% of their budget on tobacco and alcohol. Furthermore, in every region except South America, around 10% of the budget was devoted to festivals, like weddings, funerals, or religious celebrations.

Why would the poor spend money on entertainment at the cost of more essential items? One possibility is that more food wouldn’t help, because they would just end up getting weak from contracting disease later on.

Another possibility is that entertainment is a strongly felt need that provides an escape from thinking about economic problems. Festivals and similar events also contribute to social bonds that are very important to everyone, but particularly those in poverty who live in riskier environments and more frequently require support from their connections to deal with financial or other difficulties.

Even among the extremely poor, above 70% of households in South Africa and Peru owned a radio (though only 11% of the poor in Udaipur had a radio). Furthermore, while no one in Udaipur had a television, in Guatemala, nearly a quarter of households had a television and in Nicaragua almost half of the households did.

The poor generally don’t own many productive assets, but some do have some land. While only 1.4% of the poor in South Africa and 4% of the poor in Mexico own land, 65% of the poor in Guatemala, 85% of the poor in Panama, and 99% of the poor in Udaipur have land. Unfortunately, most of this land is dry scrubland that cannot be used for agriculture throughout most of the year. Furthermore, it’s not much land -- a typical household’s plot, if they have land at all, is about one hectare (100m x 100m or 2.4 acres), which is small for a farm.

Other goods that could be used for productivity are in short supply. In nearly all the areas surveyed, less than 14% of poor households owned a bicycle. Less than 1% of poor households had sewing machines, bullock cart, motorized cycle, or tractor. Houses are also pretty sparse. Banerjee and Duflo’s data showed that while most households had at least one bed or cot, only 10% had a chair or stool and only 5% had a table. However, GiveWell’s site visit of Give Directly’s targeted areas in Kenya showed that living rooms they saw typically had many chairs, tables, and couches and that most homes owned a bicycle, but few houses had radios or television.

A bycicle owned by an extremely poor person in Kenya.

The poor also tend to lack access to basic infrastructure, but it is highly variable. Access to water varies from a minimum of 0% in Udaipar to 36% in Guatemala. Electricity varies from 1.3% in Tanzania to 99% in Mexico. Access to toilets range from 0% in Udaipur to 100% in Nicaragua. Moreover, infrastructure doesn’t always appear together. While 97% of poor households in Indonesia have electricity, only 6% have tap water.

GiveWell anecdotally noted that of the fifteen households they visited, most homes had three rooms -- a sitting room, bedroom, and storage room -- varying in size from 10’x12’ to 12’x20’ each. Generally, the husband and wife would sleep in the bedroom and the children would often sleep in the storage room. Houses frequently would have a separate kitchen structure.

GiveWell also observed that people would hang old calendars (like from 2003) for decoration and used kerosene lamps for light because there was no electricity. They also heard that people walk about 5-20 minutes daily to obtain drinking water. Furthermore, they observed people owning about 1-2 cows and 4-5 chickens for livestock.

All pictures are from GiveWell’s site visit to Kenya for Give Directly.

What do the extremely poor buy?

This post is the first in a series of three on the lifestyle of a people living in extreme poverty. It was originally published on Peter's blog, 

We know that the extremely poor are living on less than what $1.25 a day could buy in the United States. But this seems implausible. Wouldn’t someone with that little money just end up dying of starvation very quickly? Simulations like the 

 can only go so far. It’s difficult to understand what it’s like to be that poor.

Blog

Why I spent a month's wages on charity, not an engagement ring

How to double your donation to AMF

Child marriage: Why does it happen and what can we do?

Difficult decisions: How I'm using my life to help others

Where do the extremely poor work?

What do the extremely poor buy?

How do the extremely poor live?

Tax efficient giving: A guide for UK donors

Struggle for survival

A first glance at Development Media International