Interview
Fads and misaligned incentives in global development | Karen Levy
- 80,000 Hours staff is projected to increase by approximately 50% in 2022, with operations specialist starting salaries set at £58,000 and applications for the role closing on April 3rd.
- The organization aims to continue scaling from its 2022 growth period while leveraging increased funder resources and risk-seeking approaches in big bet philanthropy.
- Pre-policy planning with government partners is expected to facilitate tough conversations on impact thresholds, ensure accountability for actionable evidence, and account for policymaker constraints in study design.
- Government funding is characterized by high recurrent costs like salaries rather than discretionary pots, making resources the primary barrier to zero-to-one program initiation despite potential future adoption.
- Sustainability is redefined to allow for long-term donor investment of 10 to 15 years for cost-effective solutions, contrasting with the misconception that programs must immediately become self-sustaining or shift costs to local taxpayers.
- Funding a single highly cost-effective solution reliably for a decade is prioritized over constantly cycling through pilot programs, as steady investment can resolve issues like deworming without requiring perpetual donor maintenance.
- Holistic, complex interventions are viewed as expensive and difficult to scale or evaluate due to multiple metrics, whereas focused programs like smallpox elimination succeed by concentrating on a single objective.
- Layering interventions on established delivery platforms, such as deworming networks serving hundreds of millions of children in endemic areas, is seen as a more effective strategy than building new channels for each specific intervention.
- Mental health and education are identified as underinvested areas with potential for high cost-effectiveness, particularly through teacher incentives and marginal improvements in outcomes rather than expensive holistic packages.
- The sector is moving toward problem-agnostic delivery mechanisms that focus on household-level execution, recognizing that impact relies on effective logistics and reaching the last mile rather than just product efficacy.
- NGO business models based on flat taxes on throughput are criticized for incentivizing spending over efficiency, with calls for donors to cover core costs and reward programs that exceed expectations or save money.
- Donor behavior is noted to favor new, "sexy" ideas over sustaining successful portfolios, creating inefficiencies as organizations scramble to pivot, whereas long-term bets on mundane but effective solutions offer superior scalability.
- The expansion of evidence-based development is shifting from skepticism to implementation, with immunization incentive programs in Northern Nigeria and Pakistan demonstrating rapid uptake and potential for broader scale.
- Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are expected to have growing impact, particularly as the field transitions from testing if interventions work to managing steady-state delivery and leveraging existing networks for future innovations.
- Vaccines and essential public goods are argued to require free provision or incentives rather than user fees, as even small charges can drastically reduce uptake among the poor and cost more to levy than they generate in value.