The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty
Singer (Peter)
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About the Book

  1. 10th Anniversary Edition of The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer
  2. A Compelling Book That Inspires and Empowers People to Act Now to Address Global Poverty
    In 2009, Peter Singer wrote the first edition of The Life You Can Save to demonstrate why we should care about and help those living in global extreme poverty, and how easy it is to improve and even save lives by giving effectively. Peter then founded a nonprofit organization of the same name, The Life You Can Save, to advance the ideas in the book. Together, the book and organization have helped raise millions of dollars for effective charities, supporting work protecting people from diseases, restoring sight, avoiding unwanted pregnancies, ensuring that children get the nutrients they need, and providing opportunities to not only survive but thrive.
  3. In the decade since the first book’s publication, dramatic progress has been made in reducing global extreme poverty. However, millions still live on less than $1.90 a day, and there is yet much to be done.
  4. To address the continuing need, and to build on the success of the first edition, Singer acquired the book rights and updated the content to be current and even more relevant. With mission-aligned celebrity narrators and by giving away the audiobook and e-book for free (in addition to having it available for purchase through traditional e-commerce and retailers), the 10th-anniversary edition of The Life You Can Save aims to inform, inspire and empower as many people as possible to act now and save lives.

Contents
    Foreword: “I’d never looked at it that way before.” – xiii
    → Michael Schur, Creator of The Good Place
    Preface xvii
  1. THE ARGUMENT
    1. Saving a Child – 3
    2. Is It Wrong Not to Help? – 17
    3. Common Objections to Giving – 27
  2. HUMAN NATURE
    1. Why Don’t We Give More? – 63
    2. Creating a Culture of Giving – 81
  3. THE FACTS ABOUT AID
    1. How Much Does It Cost to Save a Life, and How Can You Tell Which Charities Do It Best? – 113
    2. Improving Aid – 137
  4. A NEW STANDARD FOR GIVING
    1. Your Child and the Children of Others – 171
    2. Asking Too Much? – 184
    3. A Realistic Standard – 198
    4. What One Person Can Do – 213
    Afterword: From Contemplation to Action – 215
    → Charlie Bresler, Executive Director of The Life You Can Save
    Appendix: The Giving Scale – 218
    Acknowledgments – 223
    Notes – 226
    Index – 276

Notes
  1. There’s so much to say in response to this book, which – admittedly – I’ve not yet fully read. But it’s worth adding a few thoughts now. I’m doing this as I read through the book.
  2. I agree absolutely that frittering money away on things that are neither time-savers nor especially pleasurable (Singer’s ‘bottled water’ is a classic case) is not what we should be doing.
  3. I also agree that we ought not to ignore suffering merely because it’s not in front of our faces.
  4. But I’m worried by the traction that this can have on an individual: the argument applies until your life becomes as miserable as that of the most miserable person on earth. This also applies to your ‘nearest and dearest’ – why should they (provided they have the ‘bare necessities of life’) enjoy abundance when others do not have these bare necessities. But … Why should anyone go along with all this?
  5. I also agree with the objection to the argument that ‘I earned it because of my own talents and hard work, so it’s mine to do with as I wish’. True in a sense, but – even if we do have ability and work hard, we, in the affluent West, start off with better scope for the exercise of our talents and effort. Provided this argument isn’t taken to extremes (we’re determined by our genetics and environment, so no-one deserves any praise or blame), it’s a good reminder that we don’t really deserve to eat all our pie.
  6. Of course, we don’t need to go the whole hog (nor donate one of our kidneys to a stranger) in order to make a real difference. However, it’s a worry that there’s no principled place to stop other than at the extreme. I think this part of the book – especially placed as it is at the beginning – is a grave tactical error. How many readers stopped reading at this point like I nearly did?
  7. There are other objections, which Kantians might like (or at least comprehend). What if everyone did this? I suppose it depends on some mathematics, because it probably wouldn’t be necessary for everyone to act altruistically to such an extreme, since we might – or in any case morally can – ‘stop’ once everyone does have the ‘bare necessities’ (that is, escapes from extreme poverty). We’re not asked to equalise their experience with our own.
  8. All this ‘giving’ rather than ‘consuming’ – if the ‘giving’ is to societies other than our own – has an adverse impact on our own society beyond just its impact on ourselves and our friends and relatives. It may be a good thing for our society if we stop importing expensive consumer goods from overseas, but if we stop indulging in local consumption (so stop going to pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, concerts and the like; stop buying our children expensive locally-sourced presents; run our cars into the ground when cars are manufactured in our own country; and the like) this will have a very negative impact on our own society, leading to many people losing their livelihoods. We live in a ‘service economy’ and if no-one can afford any service, then this economy will collapse. Giving locally doesn’t have this impact, as the ‘local poor’ will recycle the cash they receive straight back into our economy. Not so the ‘remote poor’. Having written this, I see that Colin McGinn made the same objection. However, Singer brushes this off on the grounds that the likely take-up of his ideas will be low, and so the impact locally will be negligible. The global problem could be solved without seriously impacting the local economies of affluent countries. I tend to agree but would have liked to see the sums (though maybe they aren’t that difficult to do).
  9. Like many others, I had a question about reducing infant mortality. This can only really work if the society as a whole becomes more affluent, else the excess mouths who survive infancy will still not survive much longer or – in any case – lead good lives (and the superabundance of survivors will cause those others who survive to have a worse life). This is a complex matter. The book covers what’s happened to poor societies in which infant mortality has been radically reduced. Do people then have fewer children, as in affluent societies? It seems so. But – in any case – the ‘carrying capacity’ of the planet has markedly increased over the last few decades, and the welfare and life expectancy of those living has also improved. The problem is becoming pretty one for sub-Saharan Africa, which not only has almost all those in ‘extreme poverty’ – sometimes in oil-rich countries – but also the greatest projected growth in population. The book points out that the reasons for high birth-rates include the need for children to look after their parents in their old age (in the absence of social care) and to work the fields. Birth rates decline with female education (general, not just on birth control). Aid should focus not on food-aid (except in exceptional circumstances) but on education, healthcare and development.
  10. Then, there’s the question which countries deserve our aid. Huge democracies with both poor and super-rich (like India) or wealthy autocracies (like China) should sort out their own affairs.
  11. Finally, there’s the question how our contributions should actually make their way to the deserving poor, rather than being siphoned off by the undeserving – either corrupt regimes, or huge bureaucracies. The Singer - The Life You Can Save website has links to charities proven to add ‘maximum value’.
  12. None of the above mitigates against individuals of good will doing a lot more than they in fact do, in ways that would cost them little in terms of personal happiness (and could increase it: there’s a ‘feel good’ factor in knowing that a relatively minor – but targeted – sacrifice on your part can make a major difference).
  13. I also had some questions about governmental ‘overseas aid’. I imagine there’s lots of fancy accounting that goes into all this; some aid will be targeted so that our own interests are also served.
  14. US citizens may get the mistaken impression that they give a high percentage of GDP in overseas aid (when the opposite is the case) because of the disproportionate burden they bear for being the world’s policeman.
  15. There’s an interesting case study involving ‘bang for buck’ to do with ‘Guide Dogs for the Blind’. Singer points out that the cost of training a guide dog in the US is about $50k. He asks us to consider how many third-world people could have their sight restored – or be prevented from going blind – for such a sum. Thinking about this, governments have a duty to provide welfare for their citizens (subject to various constraints and difficult priorities) but individuals are not constrained by locale to the same degree; one person you don’t know may count as much as another, wherever they live.
  16. Another point is to do with ‘admin costs’ in charitable organisations. It used to be though that charities with low admin costs were intrinsically better value, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Large organisations take a lot of management to run efficiently, and this doesn’t come cheap. Also, studies have to be undertaken to determine whether initiatives actually deliver the benefits that they are supposed to. I have to say, though, that it annoys me to see some of my donations being used to ask me for more donations.
  17. There was a fascinating and encouraging account of work with ‘rag pickers’ in Pune, India. I worked in Pune for a few weeks while I was working for HSBC and could see people sleeping on the station platforms from my 5-star hotel bedroom window. It made me uncomfortable but – heh – what can you do (I then thought)?
Author's Preface
  1. When he saw the man fall onto the subway tracks, Wesley Autry didn’t hesitate. With the lights of the oncoming train visible, Autry, a construction worker, jumped down to the tracks and pushed the man down into a drainage trench between the rails, covering him with his own body. The train passed over them, leaving a trail of grease on Autry’s cap. Autry, later invited to the State of the Union Address and praised by the president for his bravery, downplayed his actions: “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular. I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right.”
  2. What if I told you that you, too, can save a life, even many lives? Do you have a bottle of water or a can of soda on the table beside you as you read this book? If you are paying for something to drink when safe drinking water comes out of the tap, you have money to spend on things you don’t really need. Around the world, over 700 million people struggle to live each day on less than you paid for that drink. Because they can’t afford even the most basic health care for their families, their children may die from simple, easily treatable diseases like diarrhoea. You can help them, and you don’t have to risk getting hit by an oncoming train to do it.
  3. I have been thinking and writing for more than 40 years about how we should respond to hunger and poverty. I have presented this book’s argument to thousands of students in my university classes and in my online course on effective giving, and to countless others in newspapers, magazines, a TED talk, podcasts, and television programs. As a result, I’ve been forced to respond to a wide range of thoughtful challenges. The first edition of this book brought more discussion and challenges, and the rise of the effective altruism movement has stimulated extensive research into what forms of assistance provide the best value for money. So now this fully updated 10th Anniversary Edition distills everything I’ve learned over the years about why we give, or don’t give, and what we should do about it.
  4. We live in a unique moment. The proportion of people unable to meet their basic physical needs is smaller today than it has been at any time in recent history, and perhaps at any time since humans first came into existence. At the same time, when we take a long-term perspective that looks beyond the fluctuations of the economic cycle, the proportion of people with far more than they need is also unprecedented. Most importantly, rich and poor are now linked in ways they never were before. Moving images, in real time, of people on the edge of survival are beamed onto our mobile devices. Not only do we know a lot about the desperately poor, but we also have much more to offer them in terms of better health care, improved seeds and agricultural techniques, and new technologies for generating electricity. More amazingly, through instant communications and open access to a wealth of information that surpasses the greatest libraries of the pre-internet age, we can enable them to join the worldwide community — if only we can help them get far enough out of poverty to seize the opportunity.
  5. The United Nations and its member states have set an ambitious target: to end extreme poverty by 2030. Ending extreme poverty in just 11 more years is going to be a challenge, but we have made good progress toward that goal. In 1960, according to UNICEF — the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund — 20 million children died before their fifth birthday. When this book first appeared, in 2009, I used the most recent figure available to me to give readers the good news that the toll had dropped to 9.7 million. Now in this 10th Anniversary Edition, the most recent report estimates that 5.4 million children under the age of 5 died in 2017.5 That is 11,780 fewer children — the equivalent of 21 full Airbus 380s — dying every day in 2017 than the number I used in the first edition, and 40,000 fewer children dying each day than in 1960. Public health campaigns against smallpox, measles, and malaria have contributed to the drop in child mortality, as has economic progress in several countries. The drop is even more impressive because the world’s population has more than doubled since 1960. Yet we can’t become complacent: 5.4 million children under five dying every year, with over half of those deaths due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions, is an immense tragedy, not to mention a moral stain on a world as rich as ours.
  6. We can liken our situation to an attempt to reach the summit of an immense mountain. For all the eons of human existence, we have been climbing up through dense cloud. We haven’t known how far we have to go, nor whether it is even possible to get to the top. Now at last we have emerged from the mist and can see a route up the remaining steep slopes and onto the summit ridge. The peak still lies some distance ahead. There are sections of the route that will challenge our abilities to the utmost, but we can see that the ascent is feasible.
  7. We can, each of us, do our part in this epoch-making climb. In recent years there’s been a good deal of coverage about some who have taken on this challenge in a bold and public way. Warren Buffett has pledged to give away 99% of his wealth to philanthropy during his lifetime or at death. Since 2006 he has donated more than $30.9 billion, while Bill and Melinda Gates have given approximately $50 billion and are planning to give more. For both Buffett and the Gateses, reducing extreme poverty is the top priority. Immense as these sums are, we will see by the end of this book that they are only a small fraction of what people in rich nations could easily give, without a significant reduction in their standard of living. We won’t reach our goal unless many more contribute to the effort.
  8. That’s why this is the right time to ask yourself: what ought I be doing to help?
  9. I write this book with two linked but significantly different goals. The first is to challenge you to think about our obligations to those trapped in extreme poverty. The part of the book that lays out this challenge will deliberately present a very demanding — some might even say impossible — standard of ethical behavior. I’ll suggest that it may not be possible to consider ourselves to be living a morally good life unless we give a great deal more than most of us would think is realistic to expect human beings to give. This may sound absurd, and yet the argument for it is remarkably simple. It goes back to that bottle of water, to the money we spend on things that aren’t really necessary. If it is so easy to help people who are in desperate need through no fault of their own, and yet we fail to do so, aren’t we doing something wrong? At a minimum, I hope this book will persuade you that there is something deeply askew with our widely accepted views about what it is to live a good life.
  10. The second goal of this book is to convince you to choose to give more of your income to help the poor. You’ll be happy to know that I fully realize the need to step back from the demanding standards of a philosophical argument to ask what will really change the way we act. I’ll consider the reasons — some relatively convincing, others less so — that we offer for not giving, as well as the psychological factors that get in the way of our doing what we know we ought to do. I’ll acknowledge the bounds of human nature and yet provide examples of people who seem to have found a way to push those bounds farther than most. And I will close with suggestions for giving that, far from demanding great sacrifices, will leave most people feeling happier and more fulfilled than ever before.
  11. Despite this, for reasons that I’ll explore in this book, many of us find it difficult to give money to help people we’ve never met, living in distant countries we’ve never visited. I’m hoping that you will look at the larger picture and think about what it takes to live ethically in a world in which 266,000 children die each year from malaria, a disease both preventable and curable; a million women suffer from obstetric fistula, a devastating but curable childbirth injury rendering the woman incontinent; and for 4 out of 5 people living with blindness, aid could have, at very low cost, prevented the condition causing them to be blind, or restored their sight by means of inexpensive cataract surgery.
  12. Think about someone you love, and then ask yourself how much you would give to prevent that person from dying of malaria, or to enable that person to be treated for a childbirth injury that made her a social outcast, or to have their sight restored if they should become blind? Then ask yourself how much you are doing to help people living in poverty who lack the means to do just those things for themselves and their families.
  13. I believe that if you read this book to the end, and look honestly and carefully at our situation, assessing both the facts and the ethical arguments, you will agree that we must act. There are links in the last chapters that will show you how to do so.
Book Comment

Tenth Anniversary edition, November 2019; eBook + PDF obtained from Singer - The Life You Can Save.


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