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The experts generally fall into two camps when it comes to alleviating global poverty: those who believe we simply need to spend more money in more places; and those who think that too many billions have already been spent too inefficiently and ineffectively, requiring a new and smarter approach to aid.
In a new book called More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty, Freakonomics blog contributor Dean Karlan, a development economist at Yale, and Jacob Appel, a researcher at Innovations for Poverty Action, describe the split:
Each camp claims prominent economists as adherents: Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, an adviser to the United Nations, and Bill Easterly of New York University, a former senior official at the World Bank. Sachs and his supporters regale us with picture-perfect transformational stories. Easterly and the other side counter with an equally steady supply of ghastly the-world-is-corrupt-and-everything-fails anecdotes. The result? Disagreement and uncertainty, which leads to stagnation and inertia — in short, a train wreck. And no way forward.
Karlan and Appel argue for a third way, one that draws from behavioral economics and relies on rigorous evaluation. To wit:
Three questions organize our discussions. First: what is the root cause of the problem? Using both behavioral and traditional economics to answer this question is exactly the first prong of our attack in this book. Then two more questions: Does the “idea” at hand, whether a government policy, NGO intervention, or business, actually solve the problem? And how much better off is the world because of it? Using rigorous evaluations to answer these two questions together is the second prong of our attack.
Karlan and Appel have agreed to answer your questions about their book and, more broadly, development economics and poverty. So fire away in the comments section below. You can now read their answers here.
And here’s the table of contents from their book to prime the pump.
1. Introduction: The Monks and the Fish
2. To Work Against Poverty: How We Do What We Do
3. To Buy: Doubling the Number of Families with a Safety Net
4. To Borrow: Why the Taxi Driver Didn’t Take a Loan
5. To Pursue Happiness: Having Better Things to Do
6. To Cooperate in Groups: What About the Weakness of the Crowd?
7. To Save: The Unfun Option
8. To Farm: Something from Nothing
9. To Learn: The Importance of Showing Up
10. To Stay Healthy: From Broken Legs to Parasites
11. To Mate: The Naked Truth
12. To Give: The Takeaway
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Do you plan on researching the most effective solutions to domestic poverty in the US?
What’s the best way to keep up with the most interesting research being done on poverty today? Similarly who are some up and coming researchers to keep an eye on?
Public health folks tend to focus on health outcomes. Agriculture folks focus on food outcomes. Development economists focus on poverty. Governments focus on GDP growth. Shouldn’t we really care about overall well-being at the end of the day? Just because it’s hard to measure doesn’t mean we should shy away from it, or should we?
What ethical constraints, if any, should ‘randomistas’ recognize? What would it be morally impermissible to test in a randomized control trial?
I am currently a college student interested in global poverty and will be traveling this summer to India to work on trying to decrease diarrheal disease in urban slums. Though our student-run organization has debated this at length, I would like to know what you think of student orgs that volunteer overseas. We travel every summer to India and are committed to long term solutions for communities in Hubli and Mumbai (so not just a one week medical brigade of sorts). But even with more of an investment than such one week programs what is the true function of these volunteer programs, and are they the best way for young people to start helping?
Does the book presuppose there is such a thing as “global poverty”? Sure there are people who are poor across the globe but aren’t the causes and solutions different in different regions/countries. Is poverty the same in both Latin America and Africa? A global solution seems to suggest a common-ness in countries and cultures that seems at odds with our view of the different dynamics in different countries and regions.
I noticed some questions have been raised concerning our right to even interfere in the lives of certain groups of people living in poverty. There is some evidence to suggest that people living in poverty are actually happier than those living in developed countries. This is usually because they rely on and promote values such as tight knit communities and they are not as materialistic as some in developed countries. I don’t think alleviating poverty is about changing these values. If anything we can learn as much from them as they are receiving from us.
My question is, how do we stop 22,00 children from dying every single day? Many of these deaths are completely preventable with adequate access to food, clean water, and medical services. How do we provide the opportunity to a small girl to get an education in a country that deems her unworthy of anything other than raising children. Poverty may be relative, but starving, dying from preventable illnesses and the lack of opportunity are not. How can we raise the bar of quality of life from the bottom up?
If poverty equals lack of prosperity, then to me the solution is obvious: identify all the roadblocks to prosperity and remove them.
In his book ‘The Rational Optimist’, Matt Ridley presents a compelling bottom-up model of how prosperity evolves from 3 pre-requisites:
1. a population pool large enough to sustain the exchange of ideas and technical innovations
2. division of labour
3. the free trade of ideas, goods and services between individuals.
I am prosperous because I have got more than a billion people working for me, and I am working for more than a billion people on the planet – through trade.
I would be interested in finding out about your proposals to lift the prosperity level of the areas of the planet in dire need of such an uplift.