Log out
My profile and settings
My bookmarks
Comment history
Please complete your account verification. Resend verification email.
today
This verification token has expired.
today
Your email address has been verified. Update my profile.
today
Your account has been deactivated. Sign in to re-activate your account.
today
View all newsletters in the newsletter archive
today
You are now unsubscribed from receiving emails.
today
Sorry, we were unable to unsubscribe you at this time.
today
0
0
Back to profile
Comment Items
You have not left any comments yet.
title
you replied to a comment:
name
description
Saved Posts
You haven’t bookmarked any posts yet.

When I was young, there were few options to learn on my own.

read more
Become a Gates Notes Insider
Sign up
Log out
Personal Information
Title
Mr
Mrs
Ms
Miss
Mx
Dr
Cancel
Save
This email is already registered
Cancel
Save
Please verify email address. Click verification link sent to this email address or resend verification email.
Cancel
Save
Email and Notification Settings
Send me updates from Bill Gates
You must provide an email
On
Off
Send me Gates Notes survey emails
On
Off
Send me the weekly Top of Mind newsletter
On
Off
Email me comment notifications
On
Off
On-screen comment notifications
On
Off
Interests
Select interests to personalize your profile and experience on Gates Notes.
Saving Lives
Energy Innovation
Improving Education
Alzheimer's
Philanthropy
Book Reviews
About Bill Gates
Account Deactivation
Click the link below to begin the account deactivation process.
If you would like to permanently delete your Gates Notes account and remove it’s content, please send us a request here.

Assessing Development Aid

Small adjustments to aid programs can yield big results

A great source of data-driven wisdom about development aid.

|
0

As I prepare for the G20 summit, I firmly believe that data has to be at the core of the analysis and conclusions in our report on development. At the same time, we need to look beyond the numbers and understand the everyday challenges faced by the world’s poorest people. The book Poor Economics is very helpful, because it is both empirically rigorous and insightful about the realities that the data doesn’t always capture.

Poor Economics is by two MIT economists, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo.  Their life’s work is traveling to poor countries, looking closely at what works and what doesn’t work in efforts to fight hunger and disease, improve education, and broaden access to basic financial services. The authors are directors of J-PAL, an MIT poverty action lab that’s a network of 59 professors around the world who use scientific methods to answer critical questions about alleviating poverty.

To me, what’s really great about J-PAL is that it’s producing scientific evidence that can help make our anti-poverty efforts more effective. This is tremendously important. The money that governments invest in development is saving millions of lives, and improving hundreds of millions. But to sustain support for these efforts, we need to rigorously assess the cost-effectiveness and overall impact of aid, and make continuous improvements.

J-PAL conducts randomized evaluations of different approaches to achieving a particular objective, such as reducing malnutrition. For example, researchers try different ways of distributing food aid in similar villages, observe what happens, and compare the results. They’ve repeatedly found that outside of situations where there’s actual famine, just handing out food – no matter how nutritious – doesn’t necessarily improve nutrition. Sometimes people just cut back on their own food purchases and use that money for something else they need or want, even though consuming more calories could increase their productivity.

Although this may seem strange to us, J-PAL probes deeper to find out why people do what they do. In some instances, they may be in a situation where consuming more calories to work harder will not raise their incomes much or at all. And they may have other, urgent expenses, such as for health care.

Poor Economics does a great job of bringing alive the complexities of poor people’s lives. It explores the tough, difficult decisions they must make – often based on very little information and with no room for error – about things that most of us take for granted, like access to enough food, clean water or vaccinations.

Poor Economics focuses on the specific results and unintended consequences of anti-poverty projects, and in doing so, it reveals some smart strategies for achieving positive results. In some situations, for instance, limited aid may go farther if it is directed toward specific groups of people. One example mentioned in the book is delivering food aid and nutrition information to pregnant women and to children whose development can be permanently stunted by malnutrition.

Related to food aid, one of the “win-win” strategies we’re using at the foundation is helping poor farmers sell their produce to aid programs in their own and neighboring countries. That way, the aid programs can fight hunger and help raise the incomes of local farmers at the same time.

Poor Economics also is very good in spotlighting how small tweaks can sometimes turn failing interventions into effective ones. As I’ve learned, this often involves identifying and removing unintended barriers that prevent people from getting vaccinated, say, or using bed nets to prevent malaria. Given the challenges that poor people face in their daily lives, we need to make it as easy as possible for them to get the help they need.

For example, Rajasthan, India, had for a long time suffered from very low immunization rates – about 6%. This despite the government’s providing the vaccines for free. Increasing the vaccination rate was a challenge – walking to the clinics can be a hassle, and the clinics are unpredictably closed. To address these barriers, mobile clinics were established to provide vaccines on site. The impact of these mobile clinics was profound, with full vaccination rates jumping from 6% to more than 18%. Building on this success, the program was further enhanced with an incentive: a bag of lentils to all families vaccinated, which effectively doubled the rate again to 38%. Even with the incentive, the program was twice as cost effective per patient as just the mobile clinics alone, since the clinic staff was much busier. More importantly, a much larger group of children was vaccinated against polio, measles, DPT and tuberculosis – saving families from potential tragedy down the road and government from higher costs of sick care. You can read the J-PAL policy briefcase “Incentives for Immunization” to learn more about this study.

To be more effective, we also need a deeper understanding of people’s values and cultures. I’ve seen first-hand that local knowledge is critical. A couple of years ago, I visited AIDS-prevention projects that our foundation has supported in South Africa. They were effectively reducing AIDS transmission from women to men by persuading adult and teenaged men to be circumcised. As you can imagine, this was not an easy task, but with knowledge and respect, it can be done, and it can save many lives.

With the authors’ experience on the ground and their willingness to go where the evidence leads, I found Poor Economics a refreshing change from the sometimes theoretical and divisive debates that surround development aid. (An excellent companion book I’d also recommend is Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding.)

So, is development aid good or bad? A moral obligation or a waste of money? That depends on how it’s done, say Banerjee and Duflo. Financial resources are finite, so let’s figure out how to use them in ways that can have the most substantial impact.

Discussion
Thank you for being part of the Gates Notes Insider community.
Not seeing your comment? You can read our policy on moderating comments here and learn about our Gates Notes badges here.
Badge
📌
Pinned by
Gates Notes
Badge
ʼʼ
0 responses
Sort by
all
all
most
top
old
Comments loading...
CTW
Thanks for visiting the Gates Notes. We'd like your feedback.
Become a Gates Notes Insider
Join the Gates Notes community to access exclusive content, comment on stories, participate in giveaways, and more.
SIGN UP
Already have an account?
Log in here
Logout:


Become a Gates Notes Insider
Become a Gates Notes Insider
Join the Gates Notes community to get regular updates from Bill on key topics like global health and climate change, to access exclusive content, comment on stories, participate in giveaways, and more.
Already joined? Log in
Please send me updates from Breakthrough Energy on efforts to combat climate change.
On
Off
LOG IN
SIGN UP
Title
Mr
Mrs
Ms
Miss
Mx
Dr
This email is already registered. Enter a new email, try signing in or retrieve your password
Why are we collecting this information? Gates Notes may send a welcome note or other exclusive Insider mail from time to time. Additionally, some campaigns and content may only be available to users in certain areas. Gates Notes will never share and distribute your information with external parties.
Bill may send you a welcome note or other exclusive Insider mail from time to time. We will never share your information.
Sign up
We will never share or spam your email address. For more information see our Sign Up FAQ. By clicking "Sign Up" you agree to the Gates Notes Terms of Use / Privacy Policy.
Street address
City
postal_town
State Zip code
administrative_area_level_2
Country
Data
Gates Notes Insider Sign Up FAQ

Q. How do I create a Gates Notes account?

A. There are three ways you can create a Gates Notes account:

  • Sign up with Facebook. We’ll never post to your Facebook account without your permission.
  • Sign up with Twitter. We’ll never post to your Twitter account without your permission.
  • Sign up with your email. Enter your email address during sign up. We’ll email you a link for verification.

Q. Will you ever post to my Facebook or Twitter accounts without my permission?

A. No, never.

Q. How do I sign up to receive email communications from my Gates Notes account?

A. In Account Settings, click the toggle switch next to “Send me updates from Bill Gates.”

Q. How will you use the Interests I select in Account Settings?

A. We will use them to choose the Suggested Reads that appear on your profile page.

BACK
Forgot your password?
Enter the email you used to sign up and a reset password link will be sent to you.
This email is already registered. Enter a new email, try signing in or retrieve your password
Reset Password
Reset your password.
Set New Password
Your password has been reset. Please continue to the log in page.
Log in
Get emails from Bill Gates
Send me updates from Bill Gates
You must provide an email
On
Off
Email me comment notifications
On
Off
On-screen comment notifications
On
Off
This email is already registered
Finish
We will never share or spam your email address. For more information see our Sign up FAQ. By clicking "Continue" you agree to the Gates Notes Terms of Use / Privacy Policy.
You're in!
You're in!
Please check your email and click the link provided to verify your account.
Didn't get an email from us? Resend verification
Upload a profile picture
Choose image to upload
Uploading...
Uh Oh!
The image you are trying to upload is either too big or is an unacceptable format. Please upload a .jpg or .png image that is under 25MB.
Ok
Title
Mr
Mrs
Ms
Miss
Mx
Dr
Cancel
Save
This email is already registered
Cancel
Save
Please verify email address. Click verification link sent to this email address or resend verification email.
Email and notification settings
Send me updates from Bill Gates
You must provide an email
On
Off
Email me comment notifications
On
Off
On-screen comment notifications
On
Off
Select your interests
Saving Lives
Energy Innovation
Improving Education
Alzheimer's
Philanthropy
Book Reviews
About Bill Gates
Finish
Confirm Account Deactivation
Are you sure you want to deactivate your account?
Deactivating your account will unsubscribe you from Gates Notes emails, and will remove your profile and account information from public view on the Gates Notes. Please allow for 24 hours for the deactivation to fully process. You can sign back in at any time to reactivate your account and restore its content.
Deactivate My Acccount
Go Back
Your Gates Notes account has been deactivated.
Come back anytime.
Welcome back
In order to unsubscribe you will need to sign-in to your Gates Notes Insider account
Once signed in just go to your Account Settings page and set your subscription options as desired.
Sign In
Request account deletion
We’re sorry to see you go. Your request may take a few days to process; we want to double check things before hitting the big red button. Requesting an account deletion will permanently remove all of your profile content. If you’ve changed your mind about deleting your account, you can always hit cancel and deactivate instead.
Submit
Cancel
Thank You! Your request has been sent
Page https://www.gatesnotes.com:443/Invention-and-Innovation secs = 0.0781146