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Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

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Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#101

Post by cjbprime »

jcroll wrote: post #52
justinpombrio wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because $20 goes further in Kenya than in wealthier countries.

My only point is that to me, giving cash to Kenyans and giving cash to beggars seems morally equivalent. Not saying you shouldn't do either but I do think if you give Kenyans cash but have qualms with giving beggars money, well I don't think that makes much sense.

Most people measure morality by looking at the difference between consequences as a result of Action X or Action Y. It's fairly obvious that giving $20 to someone making $1/day is likely to have better consequences than giving it to someone making $40/day (or who has more than the purchasing power of $40/day of social aid available to them). That's why we say the actions are morally different.

I'm surprised you think there's no moral difference. There would be a moral difference between saving someone's life with $20 and treating someone to a meal at Starbucks for $20, right?

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#102

Post by Figs »

pesenti wrote: post #97
Figs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that just cause inflation?

Not if you finance it through taxes and elimination of other programs for the very poor like food stamps.

It seems to me that if everyone has an extra $500, the likely result is rent, etc. rises to compensate, and you wind up with essentially the same social situation just with all the prices offset slightly.

If you give everyone $500 and then take $500 back from most people in taxes that just seems like you're shifting around the conditional evaluation of the necessity of aid to the IRS instead. It's still conditional aid, it's just more obscure how it works.

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#103

Post by hannibal5 »

asperous wrote: post #10

I think the context is super important here. "gave cash to groups of young people so they could learn a trade and start their own businesses." In Uganda. These people were pretty much starving before. “These were mostly farmers who had work 10 to 20 hours a week and earned about $1 a day," With different people, culture, attitudes, environment the effect might be completely different in America, for example.

In America, increasing the minimum wage would help the majority of poor who are working poor.

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#104

Post by mikeash »

jcroll wrote: post #52
justinpombrio wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because $20 goes further in Kenya than in wealthier countries.

My only point is that to me, giving cash to Kenyans and giving cash to beggars seems morally equivalent. Not saying you shouldn't do either but I do think if you give Kenyans cash but have qualms with giving beggars money, well I don't think that makes much sense.

For one thing, many (possibly most) beggars are not actually poor.

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#105

Post by swasheck »

hannibal5 wrote: post #103
asperous wrote: post #10

I think the context is super important here. "gave cash to groups of young people so they could learn a trade and start their own businesses." In Uganda. These people were pretty much starving before. “These were mostly farmers who had work 10 to 20 hours a week and earned about $1 a day," With different people, culture, attitudes, environment the effect might be completely different in America, for example.

In America, increasing the minimum wage would help the majority of poor who are working poor.

Not necessarily. The accompanying effects (things like the impact on the standard of living, cumulative expenses for the employer) may actually make their situation worse. If their employer must have the role fulfilled, then their costs increase which means decisions such as raising the price of the good/service, reducing operational costs (lower quality, or fewer workers), outsourcing, etc.

I'm all for people being paid a fair wage, but just think that a solution that focuses on one symptom may only make things worse. I think that the real problem is that, for the most part, the economy is so sick that decision-makers are either too afraid or too incapable of doing a proper RCA and triage of the problem. It feels like we've been treating symptoms and not the problem(s).

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#106

Post by slurry »

ekianjo wrote: post #28
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that different from the situation we have here in America. A lot of people are working low-wage dead-end jobs because they their kids or siblings need to eat. With only a little bit of extra money those people could stop working their jobs, learn new skills, and get better jobs.

People are not starving in America.Please visit poor countries before drawing parrallels.

People aren't really starving in Kenya, either.

It's not a rich country, but people eat.

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#107

Post by vanderZwan »

twotwotwo wrote: post #69
cjbprime wrote: post #3

If you find this persuasive, consider donating to http://www.givedirectly.org/ , which performs unconditional cash transfers to the poorest people in Kenya. Give Directly is the subject of this writeup[1] on GiveWell, and this excellent episode[2] of This American Life. [1]: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-dir... [2]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/503/i...

More from one of cjbprime's sources: GiveWell does a lot of evaluation of charities, trying to find where an individual donor's dollar can make the most difference. They hold donations to GiveDirectly to a pretty high standard, comparing it against stuff like antimalarial bednets and deworming, and think it comes out looking alright. In addition to cjbprime's link, they've written: 1) Cash transfers intervention repo…

> They hold donations to GiveDirectly to a pretty high standard, comparing it against stuff like antimalarial bednets and deworming, and think it comes out looking alright.

There's this line of reasoning (coming from African economists that have spoken out against the latter two forms of aid[1]) that if you give the poor money, they can spend it on antimalarial bednets and deworming themselves, which is is effectively the same as the former but with the added benefit of bootstrapping the local economy (provided the facilities are there of course, but that is more likely to develop if the local population has money...).

Of course that's a gross oversimplification of a complicated problem, but it's an interesting counterpoint to traditional forms of aid.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambisa_Moyo

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#108

Post by vanderZwan »

willvarfar wrote: post #78
nether wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also covered by Planet Money and written up: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/is-it-nuts-to-giv... PM also followed an American building contractor who was attempting to build a schoolhouse in Haiti. The guy landed in the country pretty gung-ho, ready to apply his extensive experience to building something relatively simple. He had never done aidwork in a developing country. After many delays and run…

Would just giving them money combat corruption?

I might step on a few people's politically correct toes for saying this, but based on my experience with traveling through Africa I'd say that the richer people think you are, the more corruption you have to deal with, and that the "whiter" you look, the richer people presume you are.

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#109

Post by brownbat »

asperous wrote: post #10

I think the context is super important here. "gave cash to groups of young people so they could learn a trade and start their own businesses." In Uganda. These people were pretty much starving before. “These were mostly farmers who had work 10 to 20 hours a week and earned about $1 a day," With different people, culture, attitudes, environment the effect might be completely different in America, for example.

Context is definitely relevant. In 1832, Georgia held a lottery to allocate all of its unclaimed land. Almost everyone in the state participated. The value of each parcel of land was immense, life-changing for most of the people in the lottery.

Families who won the lottery reverted to the mean in a generation or two: http://home.uchicago.edu/~bleakley/Bleakley_Ferrie_Intergen....

(To be fair, educational attainment and lifetime earnings of offspring are a different measure of success though, so that probably accounts for some of the discrepancy in the results as well.)

Re: Research Finds Outright Grants of Cash are an Effective Form of Aid to the Poor

#110

Post by davidwoof1 »

brownbat wrote: post #109
asperous wrote: post #10

I think the context is super important here. "gave cash to groups of young people so they could learn a trade and start their own businesses." In Uganda. These people were pretty much starving before. “These were mostly farmers who had work 10 to 20 hours a week and earned about $1 a day," With different people, culture, attitudes, environment the effect might be completely different in America, for example.

Context is definitely relevant. In 1832, Georgia held a lottery to allocate all of its unclaimed land. Almost everyone in the state participated. The value of each parcel of land was immense, life-changing for most of the people in the lottery. Families who won the lottery reverted to the mean in a generation or two: http://home.uchicago.edu/~bleakley/Bleakley_Ferrie_Intergen.... (To be fair, educational attainment a…

Umm, I seriously doubt that "almost everyone" in the state of Georgia in 1832 was eligble to participate in this lottery.

Families who won the lottery reverted to the mean in a generation or two

A small event known in the US as the Civil War, which completely decimated the economy of Georgia, just might have had something to do with this.

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