Benjamin Todd

My proudest achievement is that I've managed to educate my son in secondary school.

My biggest hardship in life is that I lack a proper source of income.

My current goals are to build and own a pit latrine and to dig a borehole since getting water is a very big problem.

GiveDirectly conducted a randomized controlled trial of their program and found that recipients experienced significant reductions in hunger, stress, and other bad outcomes for years after receiving the transfers.

These results add to substantial existing literature showing that cash transfers have significant benefits.

How much sacrifice will this involve?

Normally, when we think of doing good with our careers, we think of parts like becoming a teacher or charity worker, which often pay under half of what you could earn in the private sector and may not align with your skills or interests.

Compared to switching to those careers, giving 10% of your income could easily be less of a sacrifice.

Moreover, as we saw in Chapter 1, once you start earning more than about $55,000 per year, extra income won't affect your happiness that much.

While acts that help others, like giving to charity, probably make you happier.

To take just one example, one study found that in 122 of 136 countries, if respondents answered yes to the question, did you donate to charity last month, their life satisfaction was higher by an amount also associated with a doubling of income.

In part, this is probably because happier people give more, but we expect some of the effect runs the other way too.

How to have a bigger impact than being a doctor?

The reason donations can be so effective is that it's possible that you can send your money to the best organizations in the world, working on the biggest and most neglected issues.

Although many charities aren't effective, the best are.

And while GiveDirectly is certainly an effective charity, there are others that some experts argue are even better.

GiveWell, a leading independent charity evaluator, estimates that its top charities, such as Helen Keller International and the Against Malaria Foundation, can prevent a death for about every $5,000 in donations it receives.

In addition, this provides other benefits that come with the treatment of malaria, such as improved overall quality of life and increased income, which causes further positive ripple effects over time.

With a typical US graduate salary, donating 10% of your income to the Against Malaria Foundation could therefore save more than one life every year.

These kinds of proven cost-effective health programs offer such a good opportunity to do good that even the most prominent AIDS skeptics have offered few arguments against them.