Earning to give: an annotated bibliography
Table of contents
A while ago, I did a quick survey of the literature on earning to give—the pursuit of a high-earning career with the express purpose of donating a large portion of one’s earnings to high-impact charities. Given the recent interest in the topic, I thought I should turn those notes into a proper bibliography. If I’m missing anything, please let me know.
Alexei Andreev, Maximizing your donations via a job, LessWrong, May 5, 2013David Brooks, The way to produce a person, New York Times, June 3, 2013Chronicles the author’s experience in finding a job as a software engineer with the goal of earning to give.
Joe Carter, The vocation of Earning-to-give donor, Action Institute PowerBlog, June 6, 2013If your profoundest interest is dying children in Africa or Bangladesh, it’s probably best to go to Africa or Bangladesh, not to Wall Street.
Sebastian Farquhar, The replaceability effect: working in unethical industries part 1, 80,000 Hours blog, March 26, 2012Working to fund one’s philanthropic ventures is certainly noble. But we shouldn’t downplay the value of the income-generating work just because we can’t see as directly how it helps others.
Sebastian Farquhar, Collective action: working in unethical industries part 2, 80,000 Hours blog, July 29, 2012When we look at the consequences of our actions, and consider whether to take a job in a harmful industry, the harm of our taking the job is somewhat less than it first appears. There is still a harm, though, so you shouldn’t take the job unless you think you can do something pretty good with it.
Sebastian Farquhar, Universalisability - immoral industries part 3, 80,000 Hours blog, July 31, 2012You need to pay attention to what other EAs are doing. But it doesn’t mean that we should always avoid working in harmful industries, or thinking in general about how to individually make the most difference.
Chris Hallquist, Why earn to give?, Effective Altruism Forum, September 19, 2014We recommend earning to give only because we look at the way the world is and we reckon it makes a positive difference. If the world became different, and lots of people naturally decided to do earning to give, we’d recommend something else.
Ben Hoskin, How much do taxes matter if you're giving to charity?, 80,000 Hours blog, March 1, 2013An engaging, informal introduction to earning to give. Recommended.
Peter Hurford, What is earning to give?, Everyday Utilitarian, June 9, 2013Suppose you’re looking to donate as much as possible to charity, and are choosing between two jobs. Should you worry about the taxes in each location?
Holden Karnofsky, Our take on “earning to give”, The GiveWell blog, June 26, 2013A survey of the field.
Jeff Kaufman, How much should you give, Jeff Kaufman's blog, August 9, 2011We’re excited about “earning to give” as one option among many.
Jeff Kaufman, What about non-work time?, Jeff Kaufman's blog, October 17, 2011Earn and give as much as you can for the level of personal suffering you are prepared to accept.
Jeff Kaufman, Professional philanthropy, Jeff Kaufman's blog, August 15, 2012Even in your spare time, which you usually can’t turn into money to donate by working additional hours, you should still not engage in local charitable activities.
Jeff Kaufman, History of "Earning to Give", Jeff Kaufman's Blog, September 18, 2012A brief discussion of the convenience of using that expression, before ’earning to give’ had became established.
Jeff Kaufman, Summaries of earning to give, Jeff Kaufman's blog, March 11, 2013Credits Brian Tomasik with the first formulation of the idea.
Jeff Kaufman, Arguing about banking, Jeff Kaufman's blog, June 3, 2013Earning to give involves four main ideas: (1) donate; (2) donate to the most effective organizations; (3) earn more so you can give more; (4) spend less so you can give more.
Jeff Kaufman, History of earning to give II, Jeff Kaufman's blog, August 25, 2013Examples of people in clearly beneficial jobs like Boris Yakubchik (high school math teacher) and Julia Wise (social worker at a prison) are both much less controversial and much more attainable for the typical reader.
Jeff Kaufman, History of earning to give III, Jeff Kaufman's blog, October 1, 2013Quotes an exchange between Singer and an early proponent of earning to give.
Jeff Kaufman, Earning to give, Effective Altruism Global, August 6, 2016Claims that John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, was an early advocate of earning to give.
Ben Kuhn, Downgrading confidence in earning to give, Ben Kuhn's blog, April 5, 2013Earning to give is a career path that is well suited to people who are good at earning money, who are still exploring cause areas, who prioritize interventions that are funding-limited, who are early in their careers and want to build their skills, or who want to balance altruism against other things in their lives. I find that it suits me well, but I also can imagine myself doing something else five years from now.
Ben Kuhn, Common objections to earning to give, Ben Kuhn's blog, June 1, 2013Concludes that (1) doing high-paying highly-skilled careers might be dominated by doing directly charitable things and that (2) effective altruists should probably be spreading a broader message.
William MacAskill, Banking as an ethical career, Practical Ethics blog, November 22, 2012Discusses five objections to earning to give.
William MacAskill, Following in Schindler's footsteps, 80,000 Hours blog, June 29, 2012Altruistic bankers earn a lot, aren’t likely to be replaceable, and can support the very best charities. They are likely to do more good than someone in an “ethical” career.
William MacAskill, To save the world, don't get a job at a charity; go work on Wall Street, Quartz, June 27, 2013Uses Schindler’s example to discuss the morality of working for an evil corporation.
William MacAskill, Replaceability, career choice, and making a difference, Ethical theory and moral practice, vol. 17, no. 2, 2014, pp. 269–283Earning to give is often the best career option because of (1) discrepancy in earnings, (2) replaceability and (3) high variations in charity cost-effectiveness.
William MacAskill, 80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term, 80,000 Hours blog, July 6, 2015Defends the idea that deliberately pursuing a lucrative career in order to donate a large proportion of one’s earnings is typically ethically preferable to a career within the charity sector.
William MacAskill, Should you switch away from earning to give?, Effective Altruism Forum, August 25, 201680,000 Hours never claimed that most people should earn to give; and now thinks that even fewer people should pursue this path to impact than it did before.
William MacAskill, Banking: the ethical career choice, in David Edmonds (ed.) Philosophers take on the world, Oxford, 2016When considering whether to do direct work or earn to give, you could ask yourself: am I in the top 15% of people in terms of comparative advantage at earning to give?
Dylan Matthews, Join Wall Street. Save the world, Washington Post, May 31, 2013Condensed version of ‘Replaceability, career choice, and making a difference’.
Lucas Ariel Peñalva, ¿Qué es ganar para donar?, Altruismo Eficaz, July 29, 2015A popular, engaging piece, with profiles of many prominent advocates and practitioners of earning to give.
Zander Redwood, The flat margin effect, 80,000 Hours blog, May 13, 2012An engaging introduction for Spanish-speaking readers.
Reiham Salam, The rise of the Singerians, National Review, May 31, 2013Argues that if you take a job that seems to have a strong (positive or negative) impact on the economy, the actual difference it makes to social welfare will be minimal.
Jonah Sinick, Earning to give vs. altruistic career choice revisited, LessWrong, June 2, 2013A criticism from a conservative perspective. Claims that people motivated by curiosity and novelty or a desire for recognition may have a much bigger positive impact than people who try to do good deliberately.
Carl Shulman, Entrepreneurship: a game of poker, not roulette, 80,000 Hours blog, February 19, 2012Responds to MacAskill’s Quartz piece on earning to give.
Carl Shulman, Software engineering: Britain vs Silicon Valley, 80,000 Hours blog, February 21, 2012It would be a mistake to think of the returns to entrepreneurship as predictably stemming from just showing up and taking a spin at the wheel of startup roulette. Instead, entrepreneurship is more like poker: a game where even the best players cannot predictably win over a single night, but measurable differences predict that some will earn much more than others on average.
Carl Shulman, Salary or startup? How do-gooders can gain more from risky careers, 80,000 Hours, January 8, 2012How attractive is the software industry for those who want to make money and use it to do good? In some ways, the British statistics are misleading, but they also reflect a real difference: software engineers in the US, and especially Silicon Valley, really are better compensated. The post lays out the supporting data, and discusses ways people outside the United States can make their way to Silicon Valley.
Ben Todd, Show me the harm, 80,000 Hours blog, July 31, 2013Altruists have stronger reasons to pursue risky careers because the standard arguments for risk aversion do not apply.
Ben Todd, A comparison of medical research and earning to give, 80,000 Hours blog, December 13, 2013Makes some very rough estimates of how harmful finance would have to be in order for its harm to outweigh the good realized by the donations of someone who earns to give.
Ben Todd, How much do people pursuing earning to give actually give?, 80,000 Hours blog, April 9, 2014Earning to give in finance is slightly better than medical research.
Brian Tomasik, Why activists should consider making lots of money, Essays on Reducing Suffering, 2006Attemps to estimate how much people pursuing earning to give donate, how much they can be expected to donate in the immediate future, and how much extra giving was caused by 80,000 Hours.
Xodarap, Political skills which increase income, LessWrong, 2014A pioneering essay.
An annotated bibliography of a few recent meta-analyses of predictors of income.
With thanks to Imma Six.