What it looks like
A giver may support local institutions as well as work abroad. GiveWell’s April 2024 explanation reported typical modeled costs of $3,000 to $5,500 per life saved for grants to its top charities. These were estimates for particular grants, not a general price for saving a life or a comparison with all local giving.
Why it’s debated
This is a moral question as much as an empirical one, and serious people disagree. Peter Singer argued in 1972 that distance makes no moral difference: if you could save a drowning child in front of you at small cost, you should save a child far away at the same cost. Care ethicists and many religious traditions answer that we have special duties to the people close to us, and that local giving builds the trust and community a good society needs.
Charitology doesn’t settle this for anyone. It treats the information gap as the condition: comparisons should make their outcome measures, uncertainty and value judgments visible. This page does not establish how many donors lack such information.
No one is to blame
Caring for your own community is a virtue. The condition is only that givers should be able to see the alternatives and their limits.
What we don’t know yet
How should distance weigh in giving, and what do donors choose when they get honest comparisons? That is Open Problem 18, Proximity and Obligation.
Givers see honest comparisons across distance and choose with their eyes open, whether they give near or far.