This article also calls to mind research I've randomly read about philanthropic and political tendencies at different income levels--simply stated: millionaires give far less and tend to be Republican, and billionaires give lots and tend to be Democrats.



I would tend to see Bill Gates' level of work (with a tiny bit of aid from Buffett) more attributable to means than towards analytical capabilities. He knows he has the money, foundation and leverage to make things happen.



I, on the other hand, do not have lots of money or a foundation, so I might only put $1 a day towards a needy child and toss $20 a month to Habitat for Humanity.



Either way, I would add an extra line to your equation: Preventable death = bad; preventable death x 1 million people = 1 million times as bad. 1 million preventable deaths = 1 million people/$X billion.

If you're interested in this issue, you should definitely read (Nobel prize winner) Tom Schelling's essay The Life You Save Could Be Your Own.

Part of the problem is the size factor that you describe. Daniel Kahneman and colleagues did similar willingness-to-pay surveys 15 years ago where, for example, people gave more to save sea turtles than they did to save all marine reptiles of which sea turtles are one group.

But the other part, that you don't mention, is the identifiable life vs. the statistical life. If you help Rokia, Rokia lives. If you vaccinate thousands of children, you never know who is now alive who would have been dead. People find it much more satisfying to help *where there is need* than to prevent hundreds or thousands from *falling into need*.

I think Gates, because he's a nerd, is interested in results and where he can achieve the greatest good, as opposed to how he can feel good. Therefore he has put his money towards public health.

"I think Gates, because he's a nerd, is interested in results and where he can achieve the greatest good, as opposed to how he can feel good."

Yep, precisely, that's the point in a nutshell! Though I'm not sure the point about "falling into need" holds up -- a lot of appeals one gets from philanthropic organizations are on behalf of millions of people who currently *are* in need; they're not in *danger* of falling into need. The only difference between them and Rokia is that they're a huge mob and Rokia isn't.

Arrowyn, yes, your point cuts directly to something Slovic talks about in his work that I didn't have space to discuss in my column! Studies have also found that people are more willing to give money in situations where they're likely to have a *proportionally* greater impact. To put that in concrete terms, imagine that you give people two options: They can give $100 to fund a cure that is 90% effective for a deadly disease that kills 100 people a year; or they can give $100 to fund a cure that is only 15% effective but kills 2,000 people a year. In experiments and studies, the vast majority of people will pick the first option -- even though it saves a much smaller number of lives (90 people versus 300 in the second option). Why? Because the first option -- saving 90% of a group -- feels more like "success", even if it winds up saving less people.

I think this psychology also inflects what you're talking about: i.e. our desire, if we have limited means, to focus on smaller but more "solvable" problems.

Thank you Clive.

Frustratingly, when you discuss this sort of reasoning with the general public they get mad at you for 'treating people like statistics', and accuse you of being inhuman and immoral. Fucking neurotypicals.

I don't think the propensity of individuals to make charitable contributions has anything to do with "the psychology of numeracy." Look at how many people contributed to various charities related to victims of 9/11, or the first mega-concerts for Africa (before credibility challenged rock stars ruined it.) We pay taxes because we have to, and we expect governments to look after certain types of ongoing suffering, using our tax money. Who willingly contributes to a charity that supplements welfare benefits, for instance? For 99% of us, giving money to a cause out of our own funds requires that two conditions be met. One, there has to be a sense that if we were in the same circumstances we would also be asking for charity (i.e. give when we can, because who knows when we'll need help ourselves), and two, the probability that our individual contribution will help has to be greater than 0. We give to help with natural disasters because they could happen to any of us. We give to help pay for emergency surgery for a stranger because we have confidence that the surgery will help the victim. We don't give money to big NGO's to fight malaria because we have no confidence the situation will get better, and if there was a malaria outbreak in our own countries, our politicians would use tax dollars to deal with it, or get booted out of office. I don't know Bill Gates well enough to understand his motivation for tackling problems like malaria, but I suspect he believes that he can throw enough money at it to influence how the money is spent, and thereby accomplish some real good. Who knows, maybe Mr. Gates has a better understanding of the psychology of charity than Mr. Slovic?

Yeah, you're certainly right that many NGOs have enormously wasteful bureaucracies, and donations get wasted on their needlessly-profligate overhead rather than on actual solving of problems.

But: Do you really think this is sufficiently widespread perception/knowledge that it affects the way we give? I'm doubtful ... but I could be wrong.

Bram -- glad you liked it!

Actually seeing the mention of 911 and LiveAid, etc above, I'd be more interested in seeing how peer pressure and widespread awareness plays a part in giving. Let's face it - the majority of the punters at gigs like LiveAid don't understand Africa, and don't particularly care - but they'll get on board with something if their friends are going. Even more than this - and organisers picked up on this at the last concert - they'll donate $10 to have their name scroll across a LED billboard above the show. This seems to extend to environmentalism as well, recent punk tours have donated part of proceeds to offset their carbon footprint. Again I suspect the 'countercultural' attitude this puts forth (maybe not for much longer) is a major factor. And despite all this cynicism, I actually think this 'giving for all the wrong reasons' is fantastic. Like Gates, cool-headed fund managers don't care about intentions, they're too busy watching the balance building up.

Re: Clive

I suspect among people who give large amounts of money to NGOs, the perception is widespread enough to matter. Whether it actually is the determining factor is a different question.

I would also urge you not to always conflate overhead, administrative costs with waste. This can be the case, but one of the interesting points in Paul Collier's new book "The Bottom Billion" applies here. Administrative costs can actually be a means of reducing waste overall, by cutting down on waste on the receiving end (most notably, monitoring the money to make sure it isn't siphoned off by corrupt governments or contractors at the destination).

Presumably analysis of where money would do the most good, or meetings on how to best allocate money would also be counted under 'administrative costs'. So would, say, an economist on staff to advise on what the effects on incentives and the local economy of a project would be. This isn't to say there isn't a problem currently, but using % of budget spent on 'overhead' as your only measure of efficiency pressures groups to shift all 'waste' to the receiving end or destination, instead of minimizing it overall.

That's all pretty off topic though - I do like your article. I suspect there may be an additional advantage in 'geeks' like Bill Gates often thinking in terms of systems and systematic solutions, instead of just one time help for even a large group of specific people.

Clive,
I am glad you brought up this subject. You used the analagy of sound needing to be twice as loud to be noticed again as being louder; this is a logarithmic curve. Maybe our mind use an antilog curve when we process number relations going from small to huge. I think advertisements on the radio for collecting money may be more effective.