After much contemplation and careful assessment of the two charities, I have concluded that GiveDirectly is the fitting charity for the class to donate its $300. Although the Against Malaria Foundation or AMF is rated higher on GiveWells than its counterpart, I believe that GiveDirectly, if given the needed resources, will have a much greater overall impact compared to that of AMF (GiveWell). This is due to GiveDirectly having a greater effect on families it donates to, as well as the overall economy of the state. Through that, the overall lives of everyone, including those who did not receive the funds, directly are positively affected. The first premise needed to prove my thesis is that if GiveDirectly supplies funding to families, those …show more content…
However, that deposit from GiveDirectly can also be seen impacting lives in the long run. With this direct deposit, you will also allow people opportunities they previously did not have. For example, before GiveDirectly a low-income family may have needed not only the father and eldest sons to work in the fields, but also the little ones. Then direct deposit allows them to buy a mule, which makes the fieldwork easier and thus the younger children can go to school. While at school, they begin to learn skills for jobs other than that of an unskilled laborer and may eventually put those skills to use to create a program to help other low-income families. Here, it becomes evident that GiveDirectly doesn’t only enhance the lives of those receiving the money, but also has the potential to enhance the country as a whole. However, people will argue that AMF will increase the economy through the laboring class as well, and that it is more cost effective (GW …show more content…
It is very useful, especially in healthcare research, because it can be used to determine things other than monetary values like lives saved. GiveWell does an excellent job of showing the process with which they run their cost-effectiveness analysis with which they come to the conclusion that cash transfers are not as effective as bed-netting (Holden). However, taking all my economic teachers’ advise, I took a closer look at their analysis set up and noticed that they decided to omit several variables. In their analysis of effectiveness for direct deposit, they did include the $564 cost of a thatched roof, but they did not include the $3.86 cost of a per-person bed netting protection per year, Iodine per person per year ($0.08), and deworming ($0.80). If you add these up, this comes to $568.74, which still leaves $431.26 from GiveDirectly’s $1,000 deposit (GW Cost-Effectiveness). I recognize the difficulty of running an analysis like this as much of it is done through personal opinion and analysis. GiveWell does acknowledge this and says that these are very rough estimates, and that even though cost-effectiveness should be considered (GW Cost-Effectiveness). It should not be what determines which charity receives your