Should Effective Altruists Have Kids?

By Nicholas Decker @ 2025-01-09T18:20 (–5)

This is a linkpost to https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/should-effective-altruists-have-kids

Yes. I review why children are so important in the context of economic growth. I then roughly estimate parameters for the value that children will create, and it comes out so strongly positive that basically any reasonable altruist would want to have kids.

harfe @ 2025-01-10T10:48 (+5)

the child is adding an expected value of $27,275 per year in social surplus.

It would take $133,333 per year to raise a child to adulthood for it to not be worthwhile

I think the comparison of "social surplus" to effective donations is mistaken here. A social surplus of $27,275 (in the US) does not save 5 lives, but an effective donation of that size might.