How to Express Improvements in Animal Welfare in DALYs-Averted

Effective altruists (EAs) want to do as much good as possible with the charitable resources available to them. That is, if EAs want to do the most good per dollar spent—that is, they want to maximize cost-effectiveness—they need a common currency for comparing very different interventions. GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, Founders Pledge, and many other effective altruist organizations currently have one: namely, the number of “disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted.” However, if it’s possible to do good by helping nonhumans, then it’s essential to be able to compare ways of doing good that benefit humans and nonhumans alike. But to assess how much good they can do by helping animals, EAs need to convert benefits to animals into whatever terms they use to assess other causes. If DALYs-averted is the relevant unit of goodness, then that means converting benefits to animals into DALYs-averted. This paper develops a solution to this conceptual problem