In 2021-2, we are working across three areas and have specific research priorities in each. Our main focus is on Area 2. For a fuller description, see our Research Agenda and Context.

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AREA 1
​Foundational research into measuring well-being
Specifically, this concerns issues related to determining the value of outcomes in terms of subjective well-being (SWB) metrics.

Research priorities:

• Examining how best to convert between different SWB, as well as other, measures
• Investigating how to compare existence to non-existence using subjective well-being scales: determining the ‘neutral-point’ 

​Recent prior work:

• Understanding the nature and plausibility of life satisfaction theories of well-being
• Investigating the comparability of subjective self-reports, e.g. of happiness​

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AREA 2
Applied research to identify and evaluate the most cost-effective ways to increase well-being 
​Research priorities: 

• Estimating, in terms of SWB, the impact of potentially highly-effective interventions, including: psychotherapy for common mental disorders; cataract surgery for blindness; deworming tablets to improve lifelong earnings
• Setting out how different moral assumptions—about what well-being is, the badness of death, and population ethics—alter those cost-effectiveness estimates and may alter the priorities

Recent prior work:

• A meta-analytic review of the impact of cash transfers, in low-income contexts, on SWB 
• Using SWB to estimate the moral weights of averting deaths and reducing poverty
• A problem area report into alleviating pain

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AREA 3
Understanding the wider context of global priorities 
Research priorities: 

• Exploratory research into the plausibility and implications of the longtermist paradigm, the idea that the primary determinant of the value of our actions today is how those actions influence the very long-run future.

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Read our broader research agenda