Over the last few days I have been wondering just how severe and how fixable developing-world malnutrition may be. For a striking illustration, see “Grandmothers and Granddaughters: Old Age Pension and Intra-household Allocation in South Africa” by Esther Duflo. This paper analyzes a survey of 9000 families in the early 1990s in South Africa, when…
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Research plan: A fresh start
We completed our first year of research a few weeks ago, and are now starting up our second. (Our annual review and plan discuss what we’ve learned from our first year, and the many ways in which we’re changing our approach for year 2.) We found some strong organizations the first time around, but our…
Preventing blindness
Several people have recommended that we look at the Fred Hollows Foundation. We have been shown calculations implying that they are preventing or curing a person’s blindness for every $20-60 they spend. As we continue our research on developing-world aid, we checked them out a bit ourselves. The Fred Hollows Foundation’s programs include surgeries to…
Career Academies: An unconventional approach to education
The Career Academies initiative recently released a report on academies’ impact on students eight years after graduation. I’m fascinated by this report and this initiative because: The Career Academies initiative rejects conventional wisdom about education. For much of my life I’ve assumed that learning math, reading, and other “liberal arts” related skills is the key…
Where to focus?
We haven’t seen – either in charities’ grant application materials or in our own independent research – much discussion of how organizations decide where to focus their resources. This question seems particularly important for international aid organizations, which often work in many regions all over the world (but by necessity have to ignore many more)….
Some qualitative information on microfinance
I came across an interesting article on microfinance by Tyler Cowen. Like us, Cowen is skeptical about the common anecdotes focusing on the “entrepreneurial” aspect of microfinance: For better or worse, microborrowing often entails a kind of bait and switch. The borrower claims that the money is for a business, but uses it for other…