Geographic diversity in EA

Thank you for writing this post! These are really good points. I think EA Singapore is looking to do more research on poverty and development in Southeast Asia, which can unlock more funding from funders who want to donate to a particular country or region. But I'm not the best person to speak about this.

I also thought of another point: if you're outside of the US and Western Europe,^[1] it's just harder to stay involved in EA as a human being. This feels obvious to me and I almost didn't post this comment because it seemed like 'duh', but I remembered that I've found simple, clear explanations of 'obvious' things helpful in the past, and at least they reminded me to consider them.

• EA in general: unlike some other communities or ideologies, being involved in EA requires a good amount of effort. You're expected to take action -- donating, planning your career -- and stay updated on current thinking, which changes very quickly -- earn to give vs. direct impact? chicken eggs...no wait, fish! no wait, insects!^[2]
• But it's not easy to visit or live in an EA hub city like London or San Francisco, for most of the global population (financially, legally, for family reasons)
• In less rich countries, professional altruism & charity aren't as well-regarded and it can be difficult to get support from your family or friends
• Fewer like-minded people around you means you have to put in a lot more effort to stay engaged and informed
• Donating 10% (or any %) is more difficult. Your salary isn't as high. Maybe you're already giving 10% to your parents. Maybe you've grown up in a strong culture of saving. And you're very aware that the 10% of your salary is the equivalent of 1% or 0.1% for someone in a richer country
• You have to create your own opportunities, e.g. organise your own EA group, find impactful policy jobs, set up your own charity, get people to translate EA materials from English
• On top of all this, you probably feel consistently excluded from narratives, like your post explains

There are some good posts on the EA forum about value drift, but a bunch of the actions that people can take are less accessible for people outside of the US and Western Europe.

A Qualitative Analysis of Value Drift in EA

Concrete Ways to Reduce Risks of Value Drift and Lifestyle Drift

At some level, this is basically 'how to set up EA communities in other countries and the challenges in this'. But I think there is value in considering people's varying circumstances and the effort needed to be 'EA', even if the effect is just that some people feel a little more encouraged and validated.

Agreed with a lot of the points you've made here. I really liked the point about different geographic regions where there may be extremely high poverty. Some of the poorest Indian states have population sizes and poverty levels comparable or worse than that of some of the poorest African countries. Of course, there are many EA organisations in India, but there may be similar regions in other countries where EA is less active.

One of the potential challenges of doing projects in different countries is a lack of EA resources and networks in those regions, so initial costs may be high. Also, entering policy roles could be challenging if you're the only one promoting an EA-type mindset, and it could lead to burnout or frustration if you're unable to make change

One concrete idea to try to reduce some of these uncertainties could be to research opportunities in a country, which could both help you determine the best opportunities in your country, but also help others in a similar spot.

• Doing high-level cause prioritisation on how your country may have a comparative advantage making traction on a particular cause area. Some thoughts on an MVP for cause area research.
• Conducting expert interviews on those promising cause areas to understand the ways you could contribute to this cause area. These could include people working in industry, policy, or NGOs. Questions you could ask experts.
• Reading up existing research on your country, if any exists. Organisations like JPAL and CGD have done research on the Global Health & Development/IIDM side for a number of countries.

The biggest challenge with this type of reserach is evaluating the impact such roles have, but this is broadly true for many EA roles.

I wonder what you'd think about having a network connecting South American EAs. In Brazil, we have considered many of the matters you are now posing; I believe it would be, overall, mutually beneficial, possibly even fun.

Thanks for the post. My comments:

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

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.

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.

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 won't convince my friend's uncle to donate to Against Malaria but I could convince him to donate to a colombian charity

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.

I wonder if there is a bias when EA talks about problems not being “neglected” enough when dismissing some cause areas or focus topics

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.

There is a group here that it might be worth posting this to - Altruismo Eficaz América Latina

so, so agree with this comment, think its a huge oversight:

"-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."

Hi AmAristizábal, I am personally interested in donating to effective charities in Colombia and wondering if you happen to know of any assessments that have been done within the country to determine the most effective charities from an EA standpoint?

many thanks,