Battered Women Deserve Help Over Animals

With 3,800 animal shelters in the US to only 1,500 shelters for battered women, economist Allison Schrager tackles the disparity in More Intelligent Life. "If we value people more than animals can we ever justify giving to an animal-welfare charity?" she asks, and underlines the complexities that make donating to human causes harder, but more important.

"The assumption that such violence afflicts only the poor or deserving is both fatuous and misguided," Schrager writes. "Humans are easier to blame for their circumstances," she notes, "but if you choose animals over people because of a naive belief that a particular brand of human pain has not infiltrated your own community, you may want to reconsider." (More domestic abuse stories.)