How much is a life worth? For Peter Singer, this isn’t a rhetorical question or dorm room–style thought experiment. In his provocative new book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, Singer, a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, argues that we have a moral responsibility to do what we can to help the roughly 1.4 billion people who constitute the world’s poor.
Singer begins his argument with a story: A toddler falls into a pond as you walk by on your way to work. You look around for someone — the parents, a sibling, a nanny — and realize that no one else is there. It will fall to you to save the child. But this morning you put on a fancy new pair of shoes. You don’t have enough time to remove your shoes and save the child. What do you do? For most people, the answer is obvious: You rush in and rescue the child, fancy shoes be damned. So Singer goes one step further: If you would save a child for the price of fancy shoes, why don’t you? In other words, why not skip the shoes and donate the money instead? We all spend money on things we don’t really need. “Is it possible,” Singer asked, “that by choosing to spend your money on such things rather than contributing to an aid agency, you are leaving a child to die, a child you could have saved?” For him, the answer is most definitively “yes.”
This book grew out of an academic article Singer published more than 30 years ago called “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Over the years, other philosophers and scholars began responding to his argument that we have an ethical obligation to help lessen the suffering of others. Perhaps best known as the author of Animal Liberation (1975), a polemical work about animal rights that galvanized that movement and popularized vegetarianism, Singer decided to simultaneously respond to critics and broaden his claims to appeal to a non-academic audience.
At a recent reading in New York City, Singer emphasized the “broad church view of aid.” It’s fine, he said, if someone prefers to donate money to environmental causes, since climate change has a measurable impact on world poverty, and it’s also fine if someone else chooses to give her money to animal rights issues. Singer himself donates 25 percent of his income to various organizations, and all proceeds from the sale of The Life You Can Save are being given away. The point is that if we can do something really important at a relatively small cost to ourselves, such as improving the quality of a stranger’s life by donating a small amount of money, then we should do it.
Recognizing that we live in difficult financial times, Singer developed a sliding scale to help determine one’s financial obligation: A person making less than $50,000 per year should give one percent of his or her income, or $500. As one’s wealth increases, so too does the percentage he recommends: People making six or seven figures per year should give away 10 percent, he posits. To reassure people that even a tiny amount can have great benefits, Singer mentions several organizations doing worthwhile work, such as the Fred Hollows Foundation, which provides operations to people who would otherwise go blind for around $50 a person, and Population Services International, which can safe a life for between $650 and $1,000 by helping to prevent diseases like malaria and AIDS.
At thelifeyoucansave.com, you can pledge, anonymously or not, to give a set amount over the next year, and even calculate how much you should give based on your income. Giving — and therefore saving a life — helps ensure that we are living a meaningful, worthwhile existence. If everyone who could give did, we just might see the end of world poverty in our lifetime.