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Cause Profile: Global Health and Development - Effective Altruism
webCredibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Centre for Effective Altruism
This resource is from the Effective Altruism ecosystem and focuses on near-term global welfare rather than AI safety; it is tangentially relevant as background on EA's cause prioritization framework, which heavily influences AI safety funding and community values.
Metadata
Importance: 35/100organizational reporteducational
Summary
This Effective Altruism cause profile examines global health and development as a priority cause area, evaluating its importance, tractability, and neglectedness. It outlines why interventions like malaria prevention, deworming, and cash transfers can save lives and improve wellbeing at low cost. The profile serves as an introduction for people considering how to direct charitable resources effectively.
Key Points
- •Global health and development is considered one of EA's strongest cause areas due to the enormous scale of preventable suffering in low-income countries.
- •Cost-effective interventions (e.g., bednets, vitamin A supplementation) can save a life for roughly $3,000–$5,000 according to GiveWell estimates.
- •The cause scores well on importance (millions affected), tractability (proven interventions exist), and relative neglectedness compared to other cause areas.
- •EA organizations like GiveWell identify and recommend top charities delivering the highest impact per dollar donated.
- •The profile contextualizes global health within EA's broader framework of comparing cause areas, including existential risk and animal welfare.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| EA Global | Organization | 38.0 |
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# Global Health and Development
Jess Whittlestone
### Introduction
In 2013 nearly 800 million people were living under the international poverty line.[1](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development#user-content-fn-1) This has a huge negative impact on health[2](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development#user-content-fn-2) \- each year, millions of these people die from preventable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhoea.[3](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development#user-content-fn-3)
This immense suffering is easily preventable, but is nevertheless neglected - as of 2019, members of OECD's Development Assistance Committee spend on average [just 0.30% of their GNI](https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-data/ODA-2019-detailed-summary.pdf) on foreign aid.
This profile sets out why you might want to focus on problems in global health and development - and why you might not. This area looks most promising if you are sceptical of our ability to influence the longer-term future of the world, if you think that animal suffering is not as significant as human wellbeing, or if you think we need strong evidence of impact to justify interventions.
### The case for global health and development as an important cause area
How can you tell where your resources will do the most good?
- **Heuristics:** We can use rules of thumb to focus our attention. In particular, we might look for _important_ problems that are being _neglected_ by others, and interventions for which there is lots of _evidence_, and/or where learning more would be very valuable.
- **Quantitative estimates:** We might look at studies which estimate the cost-effectiveness of interventions, based on empirical data from _randomised controlled trials (RCTs)._
#### Global poverty causes a great deal of suffering for a huge number of people
In 2013, 10.7% of the global population lived below the global poverty line of $1.90 per day - that’s nearly 800 million people.[4](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development#user-content-fn-4) This line is intended to represent the minimum level of income needed to fulfil basic needs: food, clothing, healthcare and shelter. Arguably the biggest negative impact of poverty is the cost to health:[5](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development#user-content-fn-5) millions of people die each year of diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis that are easily preventable or treatable in the developed world.[6](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-g
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