Global Priorities Research

Why focus on global priorities research?

Governments, foundations, and individuals spend huge amounts of time, effort and money trying to improve the world. However, a lot more research could be done to figure out how best to use these resources.

Global priorities research can take many forms, using techniques from economics, philosophy, maths, and social science to help people choose which global problems they should spend their limited resources on, in order to improve the world as much as possible.

While several promising approaches to improving the world have already been identified, many in the effective altruism community see further research in this area as a top priority. Given its scale, neglectedness, and tractability, global priorities research could also be a relatively cost effective (albeit indirect) way of doing good:

Scale

Āwhata

Organisations which aim to pursue the common good— including governments and nonprofits— spend trillions of dollars each year.¹ Finding more effective ways of spending these funds could lead to huge gains.

Neglectedness

Mahuetanga

This is a highly neglected area— to our knowledge, there are only four or five organisations focused on global priorities worldwide.² More funding and more people working in this area could make a big difference.

Solvability

Whakaotitanga

Making progress on global priorities research seems moderately tractable, though it varies a lot depending on the issues being investigated (with more applied and empirical questions often being more tractable).³

For full references and further information, see 80,000 Hours’ full report on global priorities research

Interested in a career in global priorities research?

Book a free one-on-one call with our team. We can help you formulate a plan, find resources appropriate to your career stage and level of expertise, and put you in touch with mentors.

Donate to support global priorities research

  • A nonprofit research organisation that works to identify where resources could do the most good, and helps to direct them there.

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  • And more to come! We hope to partner with more high-impact organisations working in this area in the future.