Scientific evidence to guide spending on MDGs

From the Poverty Action Lab at MIT:

By distinguishing programs that work from those that don’t, and sorting highly effective programs from those that work but come with a higher price tag, randomized evaluations help answer tough questions on comparative cost effectiveness and are central to generating rigorous evidence for development effectiveness.


More than ever before, we have the scientific evidence to guide global policy. Practical and rigorously tested interventions exist that can inform policy to reduce poverty and, if massively scaled up, produce tangible and timely progress on the MDGs.

1. For as little as 50 cents per child per year, deworming of children through mass school-based programs can cut school absenteeism by a quarter. …

2. It costs no more than $2.25 per child per year to provide remedial education to children who lack basic reading skills. …

3. Doing away with small user fees on bednets to make them available for free to pregnant women and mothers in health clinics costs less than $5 per net and can increase uptake by 75 percent. …

4. Quotas for women in politics costs practically nothing. Yet, it increases women’s political participation and shift spending towards women’s priorities, such as clean water. Voters systematically underrate women politicians but exposure to women leaders can eliminate biases against women. …

5. It costs $4 per girl per year to provide free primary school uniforms that help keep girls in school and reduce teen pregnancies by 9 percent. Informing young girls about the added risk of unprotected sex with men in their 20s (or older) costs just $1 per student and can reduce the teen pregnancies with older men by 65 percent. …

6. Smart subsidies to farmers boost technology adoption, farm productivity and income. Time-limited offers to purchase fertilizers in the harvesting season, with free delivery in the planting season, can massively increase uptake and usage of fertilizers. …

7. Small incentives can be a minor additional price to pay to get children immunized. Vaccines are highly cost effective and provided for free in many countries. Yet, there are areas where coverage is low. Small incentives – such as a bag of lentils per shot – if offered to households can massively boost uptake in low take-up regions. …

Follow the link for links to the research backing these findings.

Then there is the 83 year old American making a difference in Haiti:

She returned to Haiti on her own the following year, determined to build small economic projects. She worked with village leader Briel Leveille in 1994 to bring alive his dream of creating a grass-roots organization that would give tiny loans to peasant farmers to buy scythes and goats. She wrote a proposal for $5,800 in funding, and got that seed money from Boston Episcopal Bishop Thomas Shaw.

The program has been highly successful: Fond des Blancs is now known for its thriving goats – and goat meat. Counting 850 members, the project is self-sustaining and never needed another grant.

Hackett also spotted an extraordinary untapped talent in the community – the women’s embroidery skills. So she helped the women create an artisans’ sewing cooperative that now exports finely embroidered garments to the United States and Europe, providing a steady income for more than 70 women.

Read it all.

Finally, nutrition news from Vietnam: “researchers observed children who looked more nourished than others, found that their families were feeding them crabs – considered a low-class food – and encouraged neighbors to follow the family’s good example.” The nudge in the direction of positive deviance worked. Read it all.

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