The Life You Can Save: How To Do Your Part To End World Poverty

In the Preface, Singer introduces his subject matter by directly stating its purpose: “I write this book with two linked but significantly different goals. The first is to challenge you to think about our obligations to those trapped in extreme poverty” (xiii). The second goal, Singer continues, is to challenge people to give more to help the poor, especially those who need it most.

Singer opens Chapter 1 with a thought experiment. He describes a drowning child and says that only the reader can save her; doing so, however, will ruin the reader’s new shoes and make them late for work. The average intuition, Singer writes, is that it would be morally reprehensible not to save the child for such a trivial reason. Singer then writes that over 10 million children under five years of age die each year from causes related to poverty. This poverty is preventable: If UNICEF and Oxfam, organizations that combat global poverty, had more money, then they could do more work and save more children. “Is it possible,” he writes, “that by choosing to spend your money on such things [as shoes] rather than contributing to an aid agency, you are leaving a child to die, a child you could have saved?” (5).