The GiveWell Blog

Followup on Fryer/Dobbie study of “Harlem miracle”

I recently posted about a new, intriguing study on the Harlem Children’s Zone. It’s now been a little over a week since David Brooks’s op-ed brought the study some major attention, and I’ve been keeping up with the reaction of other blogs. Here’s a summary: Methodology: unusually strong I haven’t seen any major complaints about…

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“Did it happen?” and “did it work?”

You donate some money to a charity in the hopes that it will (a) carry out a project that (b) improves people’s lives. In order to feel confident in your donation, you should feel confident in both of these. In most areas of charity, we feel that people overfocus on “did it happen?” relative to…

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