Economists and welfare scientists are developing frameworks to quantify and monetize animal welfare improvements, enabling more rigorous cost-effectiveness analysis of animal advocacy interventions.
Welfare economics applied to animals remains a nascent field but offers powerful tools for prioritizing interventions. By attempting to quantify suffering and the cost of reducing it, welfare economists enable funders and advocates to allocate resources toward maximum impact. Challenges include the difficulty of comparing welfare across species with vastly different cognitive and emotional capacities, and the uncertainty in suffering estimates. Despite these limitations, economic frameworks help prevent resource allocation based purely on charisma or intuition, directing attention toward the most neglected and numerous animals.