Tina Rosemberg wrote last week in the New York Times (paying, free trial available) about programs that are successful reducing poverty. Here are eight particularly effective ones, in her words: I. The Gold Standard: Universal Vaccination Universal vaccination is cost-effective foreign aid at its best. It is so successful, so widely considered essential, that many people today do not realize that it began only 20 years ago. II. Give Poor People an Ownership Stake ... Mr. De Soto, a Peruvian economist, realized that the world’s poor own trillions of dollars’ worth of assets. But their houses, plots of land and businesses lacked formal title – and so could not be used to do all the things that people in wealthy countries do to turn a little money into a lot of money. III. Microcredit: The 62-Cent Solution ... Microcredit now reaches nearly 100 million clients in more than 100 countries. The World Bank has found that microcredit accounted for 40 percent of the entire reduction in moderate poverty in rural Bangladesh —and that it had an even bigger impact on extremely poor borrowers. IV. Bribe the Poor ... He began a program to pay poor mothers to keep their children in school and take their kids to the health clinic. He compared the results to poverty figures in a group of similar villages without the program. It was a great success. V. Link Up the Villages ... Roads allow farmers to market their products, and bring in fertilizer and seeds. They let rural residents take non-farming jobs in nearby towns. Sick people can get to the hospital in time. Roads make it easier for the government to bring in water and electricity. Children can get to school faster, which means more will go. ... In India, it would be the single most effective antipoverty program, the group concluded. Feeder roads would also be among the best ways to spend money in Africa and China. VI. Target the Decision-Makers ... But educating girls is not necessarily good for parents – and they make the decisions. Most poor people in the world live in societies in which the girl marries into her husband’s family. Educating a daughter, these cultures say, is like watering a neighbor’s garden. Parents will send their girls to school only if the costs are very low. VII. A Green Revolution for Africa The Green Revolution is not yet over – productivity continues to increase, and even faster than in the early days. It has prevented famine and brought improvements in income, health and survival to hundreds of millions of people. But few of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa’s farmers get less than half the amount of grain per acre that Asian farmers get. From 1980 to 2000, India’s agricultural yields rose 28 percent. Africa’s dropped by 7 percent. VIII. Hold the Patient’s Hand ... Because of poor adherence, resistance has reached the point where some forms of TB are incurable ... The solution is a strategy invented in Tanzania in the 1970s and now in use all over the world, called DOTS, for Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course. ... Someone becomes a pill pal, with the job of watching the patient swallow the medicines. This can be a neighbor, a family member, or a community health worker. DOTS is now widespread – it covers about 60 percent of the world’s diagnosed TB cases. It greatly improves the chance of cure.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:23:37 +0000
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