Grants are joint with @openphil.bsky.social though Dan Brown at GW led the investigation

More on GiveWell's response to aid cuts: www.givewell.org/research/fun...

If you want to support countries struggling in the aftermath of cuts, consider donating to GW's all grants fund!

There's a strong a priori case for these grants - aid cuts have been large + fast, procurement has been severely disrupted.

Key part of the investigation was speaking to MOHs who showed strong demand for the support.

CHAI and PATH v well placed, with existing in-country teams

338 is cool, but looks like a way overconfident model!

Cutting Official Development Assistance to 0.3% of GDP means that a massive fraction of our aid budget will be spent in the UK on accommodation for asylum seekers. I don't have an up to date estimate, but could easily be half. Leaves much, much less for "traditional" aid.

P.S I would happily pay more tax to fund (a) support for Ukraine, (b) keeping aid at 0.5% / increasing back to 0.7%

Labour backed itself into a corner in election by pledging not to increase main revenue-raising taxes - Ukraine situation a good reason to break that pledge IMO

And this all underlines how much we need growth.

It's 'one in one out' on spending without it, a zero sum budgetary world.

Growth was meant to be Labour's top priority, seemed to get lost in first 6 months, they need to focus on it now - change planning laws, get building

The politics of this are hard - neither of those would be popular among a high turnout group. I get why cutting aid plays better with Telegraph/Mail.

But Labour has the biggest majority for a generation - surely use it for hard decisions that are good for the world?

So how to fund increased defence spending? Maybe a case to rewrite fiscal rules in light of Ukraine situation (though not great to borrow more). Could ditch the triple lock (with protections for poorest) and/or increase retirement age inline with life expectancy

Cutting aid for 2nd time in a few years will mean increased deaths and poverty for thousands of the world's poorest people, many of them children.

Eg of impact in aid cuts in the US: ~40,000 people estimated to die in first 90 days of PEPFAR freeze pepfar.impactcounter.com