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.
Andreev2013MaximizingDonationsViaBrooks2013WayProducePersonChronicles the author’s experience in finding a job as a software engineer with the goal of earning to give.
Carter2013VocationEarningGiveIf your profoundest interest is dying children in Africa or Bangladesh, it’s probably best to go to Africa or Bangladesh, not to Wall Street.
Farquhar2012ReplaceabilityEffectWorkingWorking 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.
Farquhar2012CollectiveActionWorkingWhen 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.
Farquhar2012UniversalisabilityImmoralYou 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.
Hallquist2014WhyEarnGiveWe 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.
Hoskin2013HowMuchTaxesAn engaging, informal introduction to earning to give. Recommended.
Hurford2013WhatEarningGiveSuppose 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?
Karnofsky2013OurTakeEarningA survey of the field.
Kaufman2011HowMuchShouldYouWe’re excited about “earning to give” as one option among many.
Kaufman2011WhatAboutNonWorkEarn and give as much as you can for the level of personal suffering you are prepared to accept.
Kaufman2012ProfessionalPhilanthropyEven 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.
Kaufman2013SummariesEarningGiveCredits Brian Tomasik with the first formulation of the idea.
Kaufman2013ArguingAboutBankingEarning 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.
Kaufman2013HistoryEarningGiveIIExamples 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.
Kaufman2013HistoryEarningGiveIIIQuotes an exchange between Singer and an early proponent of earning to give.
Kaufman2016EarningGiveClaims that John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, was an early advocate of earning to give.
Kuhn2013DowngradingConfidenceEarningEarning 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.
Kuhn2013CommonObjectionsEarningConcludes 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.
MacAskill2011BankingEthicalCareerDiscusses five objections to earning to give.
MacAskill2012FollowingSchindlersFootstepsAltruistic 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.
MacAskill2013SaveWorldDontUses 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.
MacAskill201580000HoursThinksDefends 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.
MacAskill2016ShouldYouSwitch80,000 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?
Matthews2013JoinWallStreetCondensed version of ‘Replaceability, career choice, and making a difference’.
Penalva2015QueGanarParaA popular, engaging piece, with profiles of many prominent advocates and practitioners of earning to give.
Redwood2012FlatMarginEffectAn engaging introduction for Spanish-speaking readers.
Salam2013RiseSingeriansArgues 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.
Sinick2013EarningGiveAltruisticA 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.
Shulman2012EntrepreneurshipGamePokerResponds to MacAskill’s Quartz piece on earning to give.
Shulman2012SoftwareEngineeringBritainIt 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.
Todd2013ShowMeHarmAltruists have stronger reasons to pursue risky careers because the standard arguments for risk aversion do not apply.
Todd2013ComparisonMedicalResearchMakes 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.
Todd2014HowMuchPeopleEarning 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.
Xodarap2014PoliticalSkillsWhichA pioneering essay.
An annotated bibliography of a few recent meta-analyses of predictors of income.
With thanks to Imma Six.