Tag Archives: Aid

By: Sanne Blauw*

The logic is irresistible: if we send enough money to developing countries, poverty will be put to an end once and for all. We have got to help, it’s our responsibility. In the book The Idealist, Nina Munk portrays the charismatic Jeffrey Sachs and his Millennium Villages in Africa. How good intentions can have destructive consequences.

Already at a young age Jeffrey Sachs (1954) stood out: he received high grades in school, won math competitions, and displayed leadership qualities. He was already a successful economist when the Bolivian president Victor Paz invited him to help Bolivia in the mid-eighties. The country was poor and the economy was in chaos. Inflation reached 25,000%. Sachs wrote a plan for economic recovery. The strict fiscal and monetary policies caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their job or pension. But the “shock therapy” helped: inflation fell to 15%. As it turned out: the economy is controllable, as long as you are willing to make concessions.

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Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

(First stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden”, 1899) Read More »

I used to think that giving aid was easy. You just find those in need and give them money, incentives or beneficial programs, right? It turns out that even the seemingly simple initial process of identifying the poor is not as easy as it sounds. Not only has a truly efficient method of identifying those living in poverty yet to be established, but there are discrepancies between community satisfaction with known methods and the method’s official success rate.

The main challenge that is faced by researchers and potential benefactors in developing countries when identifying poor people is a lack of reliable income data. Many of the poorest people work informally and/or inconsistently, with few or no verifiable income records. Considerable and creative efforts therefore need to be made to identify intended beneficiaries if aid money is not to be misdirected toward wealthier households.

To date, Proxy Means Tests (PMTs) have proved the most accurate method of identifying families living on USD$2 or less a day. Read More »

This month, for our Monday graphics series, Development Roast has teamed up with FSG Books and University of Washington Professor of Economics, the world’s first and only stand-up economist, Yoram Bauman to bring you a sneak peek into his book The Cartoon Introduction to Economics. Learning should be fun, so for five weeks during October, to coincide with INESAD’s Fun Economics Month, Development Roast will share one of the fascinating and fun cartoons from Volume Two: Macroeconomics. Today’s cartoon shows how humility is the first rule in saving the world. Read More »