Around 700 million people still live in poverty, mostly in low-income countries. Efforts to help them - by policy reform, cash transfers, or provision of health services - can be incredibly effective.
Alongside investigating this issue, we also discuss how much more effective some interventions are than others, and we introduce a simple tool for estimating important figures.
The second post is an example of a Fermi estimate.
In "GiveWell's "Giving 101" guide", click through to “next” at the bottom of each page, about 15 mins., but feel free to explore the rest of the site.
In "Global Health", read only the intro and one of the chapters under “Health Outcomes” (10 mins.)
Note that these are just examples of interventions that EAs have been working on - there are many more in the "More to Explore" section.