HAPPIER LIVES INSTITUTE
STARTED: Incubated in the 2019 Incubation Program (started before the program).
MONEY FUNDRAISED TO DATE (Jan 2023): $1,200,000
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Michael Plant, PhD
Founder and Director
TEAM SIZE (January 2023): 7
The Happier Lives Institute connects donors, researchers, and policymakers with the most cost-effective opportunities to increase global well-being. Using the latest subjective well-being data, they identify the problems that matter most to people and find evidence-based ways to solve them.
CURRENT OR PREDICTED IMPACT:
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HLI conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis of group psychotherapy in low-income countries, and compared the results to three interventions that are considered to be amongst the most cost-effective in the world: cash transfers, deworming pills, and anti-malaria bednets.
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They estimate that StrongMinds, a nonprofit that provides group interpersonal therapy for women in Uganda and Zambia, is more cost-effective than GiveWell’s top charities (unless you hold unusually strong views about the badness of death).
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HLI plans to analyze a wider range of interventions and charities to find even better opportunities for donors in the future.
CURRENT OR PREDICTED IMPACT:
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HLI’s recommended charity, StrongMinds, has a similar effect to a $1,000 cash transfer, but costs only $170 per person to deliver.
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This means StrongMinds is ~10 times more cost-effective than GiveDirectly.
SIGNIFICANT UPDATES:
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In 2022, HLI completed Phase 1 of their research agenda: reevaluating GiveWell’s top charities in terms of subjective well-being and finding something better.
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HLI has evaluated four interventions in terms of their effects on subjective well-being: cash transfers, group psychotherapy, deworming pills, and anti-malaria bednets.
ACHIEVEMENTS:
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HLI discovered an error in GiveWell’s analysis of deworming, which reduces the cost-effectiveness estimate by 10%-30%. If they hadn’t made this error, GiveWell estimates they would have made $2-$8m less in grants to deworming (out of $55m total) since 2019.
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HLI's meta-analysis on the effects of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
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HLI’s research has been awarded several prizes as part of GiveWell’s Change Our Mind Contest, Open Philanthropy’s Cause Exploration Prizes, and the EA Criticism & Red Teaming Contest.
IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS:
Applied research​​
Critiques
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Deworming and decay: replicating GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analysis
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A philosophical review of Open Philanthropy’s Cause Prioritisation Framework
Blog posts
Theoretical research
ROOM FOR MORE FUNDING IN 2023:
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At this time, the main bottleneck to HLI’s progress is funding. With more money, they can hire more researchers, and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of more interventions. If you value HLI’s work and would like to see more of it, then please consider making a donation.