Essay: How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place

Overview
Bjørn Lomborg sets out a pragmatic, numbers-driven argument for using $50 billion to achieve the largest possible improvements in global welfare. The piece funnels the analytical approach of the Copenhagen Consensus into a single spending scenario, stressing that scarce funds should target interventions with the highest benefit-to-cost ratios. Lomborg frames the exercise as a test of priorities: which policies deliver the most human well-being per dollar spent.
The essay emphasizes measurable outcomes and immediate human needs, contrasting high-cost, long-term projects with cheaper, evidence-backed interventions that produce rapid, large benefits. The tone is utilitarian and policy-focused, intended to shift attention toward cost-effective development actions rather than headline-grabbing but expensive endeavors.

Priority interventions
Lomborg highlights a set of health and nutrition programs as especially high-return investments. Vaccination campaigns, micronutrient supplementation and fortification, distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, and mass deworming for schoolchildren are presented as interventions that are cheap to implement yet yield substantial gains in lives saved, disease avoided, and future productivity. The argument stresses that small per-capita expenditures can produce dramatic reductions in child mortality and improve cognitive development and schooling outcomes.
Beyond direct health measures, attention is given to improvements in water and sanitation, basic disease control, and agricultural investments that raise yields for the poor. Trade liberalization and targeted research and development for agricultural technologies receive mention as mechanisms that can multiply benefits by increasing incomes and food security. The common thread is an emphasis on scalable, well-evidenced programs rather than politically popular but cost-inefficient projects.

Method and rationale
The proposal relies on cost–benefit analysis and the ranking of interventions by estimated returns, drawing on the expert elicitation and economic modeling associated with the Copenhagen Consensus. Lomborg underscores the importance of using standardized metrics, such as lives saved, disability-adjusted life years averted, and economic gains, to compare disparate policies on a common footing. He argues that rational allocation demands transparent assumptions about costs, effects, and discounting rather than decisions guided primarily by emotion or visibility.
A key element of the rationale is opportunity cost: money spent on low-return initiatives is money not spent on high-return ones. Lomborg contends that treating development spending as an investment with measurable returns leads to better outcomes than treating it exclusively as charity or moral signaling. The practical upshot is a list of prioritized actions that can be implemented immediately and scaled up to reach large portions of vulnerable populations.

Reception and impact
The piece provoked debate by reinforcing Lomborg's broader claim that some popular global causes, most notably aggressive, immediate action on climate change, may not be the best first use of limited funds when judged strictly by cost-effectiveness. Supporters praised the clarity and focus on evidence-based priorities; critics objected to the ethical framing, questioned particular assumptions in the costings and discount rates, and argued that some long-term challenges require early investment despite lower short-term returns.
As a policy provocation, the essay helped popularize the idea of prioritizing development spending with explicit economic metrics and spurred further discussion about how to balance short-term human welfare gains against long-term global risks. The emphasis on inexpensive, high-impact health and nutrition interventions has continued to influence donors and policymakers who seek tangible, rapid improvements in global welfare.