Which cause areas do Effective Altruism community members prioritize?
Results from the 2024 Effective Altruism Survey
Research authors: Julie Pedersen, David Moss
Summary author: Siobhan Ballan
Recently released findings from the 2024 Effective Altruism (EA) Survey examine how the effective altruism community prioritizes different cause areas, how those priorities have shifted over time, and how they relate to engagement with EA, demographics, and endorsement of EA-related ideas. The survey also explores how respondents think EA’s resources should be allocated across broad cause categories. Based on roughly 1,850 respondents, the results offer insight into where the community stands and where it’s headed.
Why this research matters
Cause prioritization shapes funding decisions, research agendas, and organizational focus across the EA ecosystem. Tracking how priorities evolve helps distinguish between short-term reactions to events and deeper shifts in worldview. The EA Survey is one of the few datasets that allows this longitudinal perspective on the community.
Key findings
AI risks and global health remain top priorities, but animal welfare has joined the top tier.
Around 70% of respondents rated both AI risks and global health and poverty as a near-top or top priority, with AI risks slightly more likely to be selected as the single top cause.
Biosecurity was the next highest ranked cause (62%), with many respondents placing it just below the top threshold.
Animal welfare, while rated slightly lower on average than biosecurity, attracted a comparatively large share of top-priority responses alongside a wider spread of lower ratings, indicating greater disagreement within the community.
Mental health and climate change ranked lower, but all causes retained meaningful support.
Mental health received the fewest top or near top-priority responses (19%), with most respondents (67%) allocating it between “some” and “significant” resources.
Climate change showed a more polarized pattern: over a third of respondents rated it near the top, while a similarly large share believed it should receive little or no funding.
Despite these differences, at least half of respondents believed each cause should receive significant resources or more.
Figure: Average cause prioritization ratings across major EA cause areas in the 2024 EA Survey. Bars show mean prioritization levels with 95% confidence intervals. Rethink Priorities (2025).
Trends since 2015 show diverging priorities.
Global health and poverty dominated early surveys. From 2015 to 2020, prioritization rose across most causes, peaking broadly around 2020.
Since then, several causes - climate change, mental health, nuclear security, and cause prioritization research - declined to their lowest levels in 2024.
AI risks and animal welfare are the only causes that have increased steadily since their inclusion.
These shifts likely reflect cause-specific events and broader contextual factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical shocks, and changes in EA funding following the contraction of resources after 2021.
Figure: Trends in average cause prioritization ratings across EA Survey waves (2015–2024). Lines show mean prioritization for selected cause areas over time. Rethink Priorities (2025).
Engagement with EA is by far the strongest predictor of priorities.
Highly engaged respondents consistently rated AI risks, animal welfare, and EA movement building more highly than those reporting lower engagement.
Less engaged respondents placed greater emphasis on climate change, global health, and poverty.
Figure: Average cause prioritization ratings by self-reported EA engagement level. Bars compare respondents with high vs. low engagement, with 95% confidence intervals. Rethink Priorities (2025).
Demographics played a limited role in cause prioritization ratings.
Respondents identifying as women or non-binary tended to rate climate change, mental health, and global poverty more highly than men.
Overall, these effects were small compared to the influence of engagement.
Resource allocation closely mirrored cause prioritization.
On average, resources were split fairly evenly between longtermist causes (35.0%) and near-term, human-focused causes (36.6%), with a smaller but substantial share allocated to near-term animal-focused causes (24.3%), with 10.0% going to other causes.
Highly engaged respondents allocated slightly more resources to longtermist (38.9%) and animal-focused causes (26.1%), and slightly less to near-term human- focused causes (29.6%).
Once again, engagement dominated all other predictors.
Endorsement of EA-related ideas showed mixed relationships with priorities.
Average agreement with EA ideas has changed little since 2022, though there were modest increases in agreement with insect sentience and the future importance of digital minds.
Endorsing longtermism, risk neutrality, low-probability high-impact interventions, and the future value of digital minds was positively associated with prioritizing AI risks. Notably, deference to mainstream experts was negatively associated with prioritizing AI risks.
Beliefs about insect sentience were strongly associated with prioritizing animal welfare.
Prioritization of biosecurity, nuclear security, mental health, and cause prioritization research showed little relationship with these EA-specific ideas.
Read the full write-up
The complete analysis, including detailed breakdowns and methodological notes, is available on the EA Forum.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Siobhan Ballan for writing this piece, and to David Moss and Elisa Autric for review.
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Why didn't we get a 2025 survey?