[Linkpost] Founders Pledge: how we use (and sometimes don't use) DALYs

By Rosie_Bettle @ 2022-09-16T17:10 (+27)

This is a linkpost to https://founderspledge.com/stories/measuring-health

This blogpost lays out how we think about and use DALY estimates at Founders Pledge. In short: DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) are one of the most well-used metrics within global health, and are the only metric that quantifies the burden of diseases across countries with a high level of coverage. However, they also present several limitations for conducting charity evaluation and cause area exploration. In particular, DALYs do not necessarily capture wellbeing impact, and we're a little skeptical of the methods that are used to generate disability weights—which may be vulnerable to cognitive biases, and may limit the universality of DALYs.  Overall, our approach involves prioritising direct measures of wellbeing where possible. Beyond that, we aim to account for the limitations of DALYs—without neglecting their use completely—to maximise our ability to identify the most impactful ways to do good in the world.