In addition to our charity-specific investigations, we’re looking to review as much literature as possible on the following questions. Note that these were originally posted to our email list, before it went public.

1. What is the evidence that aid works/has worked at all? That it has caused reductions in infant mortality, economic growth, or anything else?
2. Has aid worked better in some parts of the world than others? Are there any broad patterns in where and when aid works (as opposed to what interventions)?
3. Can we expect health aid to create economic growth? Can we expect economic aid to work in areas where health is poor?
4. Why have some parts of the world emerged from poverty while others haven’t? Is there anything aid can do to make the former more likely? (#2 is about whether aid has accomplished proximate goals like improving health – #3 asks what the biggest success stories are and whether there’s any plausible case that aid *could* accelerate them.)
5. What are the risks of aid causing harm, and what evidence is there for their severity? Possibly ways that aid can cause harm include:
   • Overpopulation due to declining mortality
   • Crowding out government aid; encouraging governments to remain corrupt
   • Talent drain: turning all of Africa’s brightest into health/aid workers
   • Economic distortion: outcompeting private farmers and for-profit aid companies with subsidized prices
6. What is the current allocation of aid across the world? How much of it is going to programs that don’t work or aren’t proven? How much of it is going to programs that appear overfunded?
7. How can one determine whether an intervention is funded to capacity?

Via Joanne Jacobs: San Francisco Chronicle reports that Oklahoma and Georgia have seen no improvement on achievement test scores since implementing universal preschool programs. It also refers to a discouraging-sounding large-scale study of Tennessee’s preschool program, although it doesn’t give a specific citation (and I can’t find one online).

A couple things to keep in mind:

• All of the discouraging results cited here refer to achievement test scores. Possible impacts on mental health, later life outcomes, etc. are not discussed.
• The Tennessee finding is reported as excluding “at-risk kids.” We’ve always thought it very possible that early childhood care is most beneficial to at-risk children, and indeed that the gains for such children may account for the entire observed effects.

Our existing position on large-scale preschool programs is that no strong evidence exists for their effectiveness. The programs discussed here are unusually high-intensity programs, so the findings do call into question whether replicating the encouraging results of model programs is even theoretically possible.

Note that none of this discussion pertains directly to our current top charity in early childhood care, the Nurse-Family Partnership (our review here).

Malaria is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest killers; lymphatic filariasis is one of its most debilitating. Malaria matters reports on new efforts to combat both at once, as they are both mosquito-transmitted. We’re surprised that there isn’t a longer history of such efforts.

Donors interested in microfinance shouldn’t miss the recent posts by Philanthropy Action. Note that Philanthropy Action is co-edited by Timothy Ogden, a member of our Board of Directors.

The coverage discusses papers that we don’t yet see at Innovators for Poverty Action (co-host of the conference and a favorite source of ours). To me the two most interesting posts are:

• A challenge to the conventional wisdom that microfinance should target women. Personally, I don’t find the analysis here very compelling – it’s looking at grants, not loans, and as such the characteristics of clients could be very different from those of a typical microfinance program. I’d be very interested in seeing the same analysis for loans.
• The results of the first true randomized controlled trial on a microcredit program – finding “no impact of access to credit on outcomes for education, health, or women’s empowerment.” This directly contradicts our current, weakly optimistic take, not to mention conventional wisdom. We eagerly anticipate checking this paper out once it becomes available.

As a reminder, our blog is a personal and informal forum, and does not represent the official views of GiveWell. Our About This Blog page states:

While our main site features researched and edited content, aiming to present all our information in a neutral way for you to make your own decisions, our blog is highly personal. Posts do not represent the official views of GiveWell; they represent the unfiltered opinions of project members, who may (and often do) disagree with each other.

We aim to share all of our thoughts relating to the choices faced by individual donors. The Prop 8 issue strikes me as a particularly good opportunity, to the point where I’ve made a personal donation partly on “ROI” grounds (as opposed to purely personal grounds); so I’ve posted my personal decision and reasoning. In general, we have a principle of full disclosing our values and biases, rather than denying or hiding them.

However, GiveWell the organization, as represented by the Board of Directors as well as Elie and me, does not officially endorse or oppose Proposition 8 (and the donation I referred to was a personal one).

I gave to a group fighting Proposition 8 in California because it struck me as a really good opportunity to make a difference with a donation. This is about as far from our normal focus as it gets, and I don’t have nearly the knowledge of political advocacy that I would like to have, so I’m not going to go into this much. But in a nutshell:

• The polling on this issue looks close. Unlike the Presidential election, it may be close enough that some extra advertising could make the big difference.
• I’d also guess that it’s relatively easy to translate dollars into votes for something like this. A lot of people will be turning out primarily to vote for President; a well-done ad or phone call, or just a reminder, could be enough to get them to vote No on Proposition 8.
• As such, I don’t really need to be convinced that the people running this organization are particularly brilliant or have amazing advertising abilities; as long as they’re using money to do things like run ads and make phone calls, it’s probably money well spent. (And there is enough content on the website that I don’t fear fraud.)
• I feel strongly that gay couples should be able to get legal marriage licenses. I think most political issues are more complex/two-sided than advocates recognize, but not this one. If you feel differently, this post doesn’t apply to you, and that’s fine.

I hope that sometime in the future, we’re able to learn more about the conditions under which advocacy money matters and the conditions under which it doesn’t. With what little I know, and even without an ability to remotely quantify it, this seemed like too good of a buy to pass up, so I’m passing it on.