I get two very different pictures of how aid funding works, depending on whether I’m looking at my options as a donor (as I’ve been doing for the last couple of years) or reading papers intended for policy makers (Disease Control Priorities report, Report of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health). The latter sources focus…
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I like it. How do I fund it?
The Community-Led Total Sanitation program looks like a potentially good target of funding. I like the approach: attacking all of the many sources of contamination (see diagram) rather than focusing narrowly on water. It’s been done before, with potentially encouraging results (see page 9). I haven’t seen enough on it to call it a “proven”…
Infant mortality and overpopulation
When looking at programs that mostly target infant mortality, I’ve mostly thought of them as “population-increasing” programs. I’ve sympathized with donors who say that bigger populations might be the last thing poor villages need, and I’ve also assumed that “strict utilitarians” are likely to value such programs more than I do. It’s interesting to see…
A few thoughts on water
The cause of “water” is one of the more (initially) emotionally appealing, and probably marketable, causes in developing-world aid. Here are some thoughts on the cause, fresh off of reading the Copenhagen Consensus report on it: From what I’ve seen – both in terms of water-related literature and in terms of general morbidity data –…
Significant life change
If you could accomplish any of the following for the same cost, which would you choose? (1) Prevent 100 deaths-in-infancy, knowing that in all likelihood these 100 people will grow up to have consistently low income and poor health for their ~40-year-long lives. (2) Provide consistent, full nutrition and health care to 100 people, such…
Malnutrition and income
Over the last few days I have been wondering just how severe and how fixable developing-world malnutrition may be. For a striking illustration, see “Grandmothers and Granddaughters: Old Age Pension and Intra-household Allocation in South Africa” by Esther Duflo. This paper analyzes a survey of 9000 families in the early 1990s in South Africa, when…