Hi, I´m from Colombia (first post) and I want to share my thoughts on lack of geographic diversity in EA.
I suspect that due to lack of diversity, questions that could be relevant to EA have not been considered enough and here I share some of the ones that I deal with the most (although I don't have a strong position about most of these things and probably I just have not been aware if they DO HAVE been considered, in that case I would appreciate a lot if you could send links or recommendations):
-Whether giving locally could be better (or not) for donors in low and middle income countries:
Countries with weak currencies such as mine face high exchange rates (especially in hard times such as this pandemic). I have the intuition that with a volatile dollar price it doesn't always make sense to donate to EA recommended charities and perhaps donors could allocate better their donations by donating locally. In my case I just switch to save and donate later (because I'm young and my salary is low haha) but what if I still want to donate a little bit to keep motivation? Or what if I want to convince my friend's uncle to donate?I still want to have an informed opinion.
-Spot regional differences within countries when answering different types of questions: Even if my country's GDP is higher than many countries where effective donations according to EA are allocated, there are many regions within my country where poverty is extremely high, even higher than in richer cities from poorer countries. Those differences are hard to spot if EA spots “poverty” as a whole without zooming in geographical zones.
-Addressing the real potential of going into policy in LMICs: EA recommends policy careers but I suspect that it's an even more important path in LMICs, where policies are weaker, policymakers are even less evidence based and where institutions have a lot more potential to improve.
-Whether there is a chance to adapt EA to other cultural values:
Individualism vs collectivism: I feel that EA was born in cultures that value individualistic goals (even if the focus is on the world as a whole). For example, I see EA deeply linked to “western”´s understanding of freedom, independence of thought, skepticism, mistrust for authority and social norms, etc… However, other cultures with more collectivist mindsets can struggle to link altruism to those specific values. In many cultures altruism is deeply linked to religion or family bonds and giving is prioritized when you help those that surround you. Even if there is no rational argument to value more a life in my country vs a life in sub-saharan Africa, what if EA is losing an opportunity to take advantage of these cultural drives towards giving by, for example, strengthening local networks of charities.
Nationalism: Even if I'm not fond of nationalism I do recognize it as a huge drive for altruism in my country (probably in many others as well). I won't convince my friend's uncle to donate to Against Malaria but I could convince him to donate to a colombian charity. Could we use those emotional bonds to promote doing good in an effective way at the same time?
-I wonder if there is a bias when EA talks about problems not being “neglected” enough when dismissing some cause areas or focus topics: an example that comes to my mind is gender inequality in governments or in the workplace. In EA there is a whole focus area on improving institutional decision making, which is great (actually there is where I want to focus); but what if there are easier and more urgent steps to be taken towards IIDM in LMICs such as focusing on women's access to governments (something that in high income countries is not that neglected and has been widely addressed, or at least a lot more than in other countries). So would donating to organizations that are promoting women participation in governments in LMICS be a good cause to donate, taking into account that institutions in these countries face a huge problem that comes even before cognitive biases or poor decision making processes and it's that there is not enough representation of 50% of the population?
I would love to know what has been said about these topics and feel free to reach out.
Update: Due to this post I addressed the topic during the EA Unconference, here is the link to the video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byWYr2oH1y8
Thanks for the post. My comments:
1. Actually, if you're from a poor country and use the current TLYCS calculator, you likely have to be rich for them to recommend you to donate a significant portion of your income.
2. I have mixed intuitions here, maybe someone could better disentangle them: a) if my currency vs. U$dollar exchange rate goes from 1:2 to 1:4, my donations apparently lose half of their value; b) however, if this movement is global (because exchange rates markets overvalue U$ dollar, due to the uncertainties caused by the pandemic), then probably the currency in the countries receiving aid will drop, too - so, on average, everything remains the same; c) due to recession, people donate less, thus saving money to donate later may have a cyclical effect.
I totally agree with that. But LMICS have their own peculiarities and serious governance issues; for instance, I haven't found 80kh advice on public policy that is applicable to someone beggining a civil service career in Brazil. It'd be probably impactful to find organizations with more local expertise.
I don't know how much it scales, but in Brazil, Doebem offers to tranfer donations to GiveWell charities (AMF, GD and SCI), and also to Brazilian charities recognizedly transparent and that have had their impact previously evaluated by international researchers (though not with the same rigor of GW). Besides, they have experimented with direct transfers during the pandemic.
On the other hand, in LMICS, I think many people are often suspicious of local charities they don't have direct contact with, and might be more trustful of foreign recognized charities - with established reputations and rigorous evaluation. For example, when I talk about GD, people usually say "great idea"; but when I mention doedireto, I face all kinds of questions: "how can you ensure the money gets to the right person? or that they won't spend in drinks? etc." This is not unjustified, considering the bad rep the charity sector may have in some circles.
1. I think "neglectedness" is actually a proxy to assess the expected marginal impact of and additional contribution to a cause - . So, it might not be applicable to causes advocating for systemic change, where you should perform some sort of tipping point analysis instead. On the other hand, the true problem here is: how do you evaluate charities / projects aiming for systemic change?
2. This might lead to a selection bias - we'll end up focusing on projects that might be easier to evaluate; this is often compared to that joke where an economist searches for her keys under the lightpost because that's the only place she can see. I think most people working with charity evaluation in EA are aware of that; on the other hand, requiring no evidence would likely lead to bad incentives, and you still need some evidence to assess the opportunity costs of a project.
3. I actually think improving women participation in LMIC governments (and leading positions in general) would be a good cause precisely because (epistemic status: guess based on anecdotal experiences and some light readings on organizations and management) it would improve institutional decision-making (besides, of course, mitigating discrimination). It would be interesting to see a more profound assessment of this area.
I think the calculator you mentioned is kinda... broken. I notice that the local cost of living is ignored and no recommendation is given for incomes under $40,000 USD (or rather the recommendation is "we recommend giving whatever you feel you can afford without undue hardship"). A "well-paying" job in a LMIC is usually below $40,000/year. My highest gross income ever was about $100,000 CAD, and for this they recommend a 1% donation. Nah, I'll stick with 10%+ thanks. You have to make over $83,000 USD for the recommendation to inch past 1%.