A Guy in the Pew

The Wall Street Journal this morning has a fascinating article about a group, Give Well, that attempts to evaluate which charities give the most good (e.g. saved lives) for the buck. As you might expect, they determine that particular interventions in the third world provide the best return on the charitable investment: GiveWell sits at the center of a small but growing movement in philanthropy, what you might call "evidence-based giving," which is particularly in vogue among tech millionaires and billionaires. In addition to praise from economists and those in the traditional philanthropic world, GiveWell has earned accolades from tech types. Its largest funder is Good Ventures, the foundation created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now runs the foundation. In its philosophical outlook, GiveWell also has much in common with other tech-funded philanthropies, including Pierre Omidyar's , Jeff Sk...

Conservative critics of the Episcopal Church seem to take great joy in challenging the recent efforts of the Episcopal Church to focus on world poverty, and in particular, on the Church's support of the Millennium Development Goals. Now, I do realize that at times the focus on MDGs becomes self-parody (most notably with the well-meaning MDG Stations of the Cross). Nonetheless, I think that these conservative critics are missing a larger bibical point. As a starting point, I think that it is important to emphasize the affluence of Americans by world standards. All but the poorest Americans are rich--quite rich--by world standards. So, assuming that the conservatives are right about same sex relationships, what do you think that Jesus will be most upset about on Judgment Day: that we have a few hundred gay and lesbian priests in the Episcopal Church or that American Christians have done so little to deal with world poverty? Can you read the gospels and really come to any other co...

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation have a new campaign, urging americans to take at least part of the stimulus check and use it to help alleviate global poverty: The Basic Idea Take the "economic stimulus check" you'll get from the government in May (or a similar amount if you don't qualify for a check) and pledge to give all or part of it to organizations working to alleviate global poverty. Our MissionTo start a conversation about what it means to be a Christian in a society that encourages overconsumption. To hold up a vision of choosing compassion over consumption. Why A "Stimulus Check" Campaign? How we spend money has spiritual underpinnings. Our society encourages overconsumption far beyond our actual needs. It's both morally and economically unsustainable.Now, the federal government has rewarded the overconsumption that led to economic slowdown by providing many tax filers with an "economic stimulus check" of between $600 and $2,1...

Episopalians for Global Reconciliation have a brilliant idea involving the NCAA Basketball finals (aka March Madness). The Lead has the full story: The brackets are set, the NCAA tournament bids are out -- this year Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation invites you to add a little purpose to your picking. We call it March Gladness . March Gladness combines two of our favorite things -- Making Poverty History and the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Here's how it works: Like your regular NCAA pool, you fill out your tournament bracket -- picking each game in the field of 65 right up to the championship game. Like your regular pool it costs a little to get in. Like your regular pool, the people who do the best picking the games win the pot. Here's where Madness turns to Gladness: *Instead of an entry fee, there is a small donation ($10). *Along with your bracket(s) you designate a nonprofit (must be an official 501(c)3 whose work contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Dev...

The good news is that world poverty is declining. the bad news is that the decline is concentrated in a few countries and is not benefiting the poorest of the poor: The world’s poorest people are not seeing the benefits of a global decline in the poverty rate driven by Asia’s economic growth in the past 20 years, a report said today. The report by the International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington, said that the world is on track to reach a U.N. target of halving poverty and hunger by 2015. Yet, those living on less than 50 cents a day have benefited the least from poverty-reduction efforts, it said. It estimated that 162 million people fall into the poorest category in 2004 while some 838 million lived on between 50 cents and $1. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest live in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said Read it here . A great deal of information about the report itself, including fact sheets, the full report, and even a podcast can be found here .

I learned in my years as both an elected official and as an appointed official that one of the biggest mistakes that advocates make is to ignore the good news and focus on the problems that remain unsolved. I understand the concern that sometimes good news can remove the urgency for action, but I also think that harping solely about bad news has its own set of problems. Most importantly, the audience quickly comes to the conclusion that the problems are hopeless so why bother? For that reason, I would like to highlight some great news just announced by UNICEF--child mortality has dropped in absolute terms. The New York Times has the details: For the first time since record keeping began in 1960, the number of deaths of young children around the world has fallen below 10 million a year, according to figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund being released today. This public health triumph has arisen, Unicef officials said, partly from campaigns against measles , malaria and bott...

I have writen in the past on Maison de Naissance, a birthing center in Haiti founded by a few doctors, including our friend Elizabeth Wickstrom. The Kansas City Star has a wonderful profile: A few years ago Cindy Obenhaus and a group of Kansas City doctors and nurses traveled to Haiti on a fact-finding mission. What they found, after visiting hospitals and interviewing hundreds of Haitians, was that the high infant and mother mortality rate was due to three factors — good care was too far away; it cost too much; and even if a pregnant woman could get to a hospital and afford the fees, she didn’t trust the doctors or the family was turned away. “Those were the three barriers,” Obenhaus said. “So we decided we needed triple therapy. We decided to open a birthing center in a rural community in Haiti. And that’s how Maison de Naissance started.” In October 2004, Obenhaus, along with a large group that included physicians Stan Shaffer, Elizabeth Wickstrom and nurse-midwife Denise Fryzelka...

Remember Malthus? He is the economist that gave economics a bad name by positing that efforts to produce more food is for naught--we will quickly revert to a world of minimal survival thanks to population growth. Malthus was clearly right for the world that existed before 1700. In the industrialized world, we no longer live in a Malthusian world. To the contrary, we have benefited from increased prosperity--and reduced population growth. Charles Kinney, a senior economist at the World Bank has a quite persuasive paper that supports the proposition that the Malthusian model id dead even in the developing world--including most of Africa. Here is the abstract of his unpublished paper: The key features of the Malthusian model are that (i) income determines population growth, with rising wages increasing survival rates and (ii) there is a vital factor of production (land) which is fixed, implying decreased returns to scale for all other factors. The equilibrium state in such a model i...

Nicholas Kristof, who has been long interested in issues of development has a very interesting column today about whether foreign aid works--it is an expansion of some thoughts he previously posted on his blog (my own post on this Kristof post can be found here ): A handful of recent books and studies suggest that aid is sometimes oversold, including the superb new work called “The Bottom Billion,” by Paul Collier, the World Bank’s former research economist (it’s the best nonfiction book so far this year). A forthcoming book, “Farewell to Alms,” by Gregory Clark, a University of California economist, even argues that conventional aid can leave African countries worse off than ever. And a study by two economists formerly of the I.M.F., Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian, forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics, concludes: “We find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship between aid inflows into a country and its economic growth. We also find no e...

Michael Gerson and I probably disagree about more than we agree when it comes to public policy, but his column in this morning's Washington Post is spot on, in my view: The Millennium Challenge Corp. is grown-up foreign aid. Under this three-year-old program, a board certifies countries that are likely to use assistance wisely -- nations committed to democratic and free-market reform and fighting corruption -- and works with them as partners on projects to combat poverty and encourage economic growth. Nations that backtrack on reform and good governance have their "compacts" cut off, causing humiliation and occasional repentance. After a slow start, the MCC has made agreements with 13 nations. But at a recent breakfast, Ambassador John Danilovich, who heads the program, was in a state of dignified bewilderment. The Senate Appropriations Committee, demonstrating bipartisan shortsightedness, had just reduced funding for the MCC from the administration's $3 billion requ...

Sometimes we need to confront uncomfortable facts in the search for truth. I think that one such uncomfortable fact that progressives need to confront directly and honestly is that a combination of a focus on smaller families in the developing world, access to abortion, increased access to sonogram technology, and a preference for boys, is causing some significant changes in the sex ratios in many countries. Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D., executive vice president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) , has a post on the First Things blog that is well worth reading. I certainly don't agree with all that she says. For example, both she and C-FAM seem to oppose any efforts to increase contraception in the developing world. Nonetheless, she identifies and real issue that all of us--including the pro-choice community, need to confront: Right now, in almost any corner of the world, a baby girl is being killed just because she is a girl. Her mother may be rich or poor, educat...

I must say that I am impressed with Gordon Brown, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. His speech today at the United Nations was particularly impressive as it focused, without the typical equivocation, on the need for the industrialized countries to live up to the promises made about the Millennium Development Goals. Here are some highlights from the speech: When one month ago I took office as Prime Minister, one of my first acts was to ask Ministers of the United Kingdom Government - from International Development and Foreign Office to Business and Trade, Treasury and the Environment - to report to me on what we must do to meet the world's Millennium Development Goals and to eradicate the great evils of our time: illiteracy, disease, poverty, environmental degradation and under-development. Earlier this month, the UN Secretary General launched the UN's 2007 progress report on the goals. He said there was a clear need for urgent and concerted action. Now one month la...

One of the few positive public policy developments in recent years has been the expansion of coverage of children through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip). Simply put, Schip expands coverage of children (and pregnant women) in Medicaid systems. It is now time to reauthorize Scip, and there are two competing proposals--the bipartisan Senate version has a modest increase in coverage funded by an increase to tobacco taxes, and the Senate version has a much larger expansion, funded by a cut in insurance company subsidies under the Medicare program. The Bush Administration is threatening to veto both versions. Why? Paul Krugman of the New York Times thinks that the Bush Administration opposes expansion because it works too well. George Bush, who opposed this program when he was Governor, is fearful that success will put more pressure to further expand government health programs: When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the posit...

On his blog , Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times asks some tough questions about the efficacy of foreign aid. Given his strong concern for world poverty, the answers are troubling: One of the most vexing challenges for humanitarians has been the lack of evidence that foreign aid is effective. Traditionally, it was assumed that foreign aid would fight poverty and spur economic growth rates in poor countries. But then a number of studies found zero correlation between aid inflows and growth rates in poor countries. A landmark study by Dollar and Burnside, however, found that aid might help in countries with good governance — and that became the new standard. The new conventional wisdom was that aid might not work in all countries, but it would spur growth in countries with low corruption and sound policies. That’s the theory behind the Millennium Challenge Accounts, the new U.S. aid program. But in recent years, that view has been challenged as well. The newest examination is here, ...

The Prosperity Gospel is well known in the United States. As Paul Gifford, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, reports in Christian Century , however, the fastest growing Christian Churches in Africa--Pentacoastal Churches--are preaching a Prosperity Gospel as well: Though virtually all forms of Christianity in Africa are experiencing explosive growth, the churches growing most spectacularly are the ones that are Pentecostal or neo-Pentecostal or "Pentecostal-like." After 23 years of visiting African churches, I would venture another generalization: the growing Pentecostal churches have one thing in common—a focus on achieving success. Discussing African Pentecostalism without discussing its emphasis on success is like discussing computers without mentioning software. In this form of Christianity, a believer is successful; if not, something is very wrong. This emphasis can be seen in the names of the churches: Victory Bible ...

I earlier posted about Nicholas Kristof's optimistic report about Rwanda. Now Jennifer Brea, a freelance journalists who writes on Africa, offers a similar report in on the Guardian's group blog. It is well worth reading in full. Here are highlights: In 1994, Rwandans decided to commit collective suicide. Neighbours killed neighbours, priests their congregants, and parents their own children until one out of every 10 men, women and children was dead. Just 13 years later, Rwanda has become one of the safest, best-governed and most optimistic countries on a continent where corruption, insecurity and abysmal leadership are often the norm. How? As far as I can tell, sheer force of will plus a whole lot of positive thinking. The genocide was a story of highly organized mass hysteria, Rwanda's "follower culture" taken to its most evil extreme. Today, President Paul Kagame, a former military commander, has mobilized that culture to serve a very different vision. Th...

David Kuo, a former Bush Administration assistant has this observation about the charges that John Edwards is a hypocrite because he lives a rich lifestyle while speaking out against poverty: John Edwards is a rich hypocrite. He is vain. He spends too much money on his hair, his house and everything else. He isn't believable. He shouldn't be talking about the poor - he is just using them. These are the critiques that I read about him in print and in my blog and in private emails to me. I think I know why he bugs us. It isn't any one of those reasons. He bugs us because he challenges each of us in a most uncomfortable way. In talking about poverty he makes us confront the poor. And unlike other major social issues - health care or immigration for instance - we know we can do something about poverty. We know that we can give me more money and time. We know that we can spend a little less on ourselves to help the poor. It is easier, however, to label him a hypocrite. We have ...

When my wife worked at the governor's office, she had all the easy issues--like homelessness. In 2005, she and many homeless advocates were appalled at the lack of action when 30 homeless men and women dies as the result of he summer heat. Why? Because day shelters and other services were inadequate. Fortunately, according to this Christian Science Monitor report , it appears that things are changing for the better--thanks to the faith community in my home town. Here are some highlights: "Living outside, whether summertime or wintertime, is both dangerous and life-threatening to the homeless," says Michael Stoops, acting director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. "Phoenix," he adds, "has had a sorry history in dealing with the issue." That's changing, say experts in Arizona. After 30 homeless people died during a similar hot streak in 2005, officials and faith-based groups in the Phoenix area redoubled efforts to coordinate...

The Economist has a good essay on where we are with the Millennium Development Goals. These goals all have as their ultimate goal the reduction of extreme poverty by 2015. First, the good news, the MDG's have not become a forgotten political promise. To the contrary, they have become stronger with every year: MAKE poverty history is a compelling slogan. Halve it by 2015, in contrast, is a measurable commitment. That is the logic behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a host of targets in the struggle against global deprivation, disease and illiteracy, set by the world's leaders at a United Nations jamboree in 2000. The goals claim to convert campaign slogans into bankable pledges, complete with a number and a date. The world has, for example, resolved to cut the rate at which mothers die from childbirth by three-quarters from 1990 to 2015. The percentage of people without safe water will fall by half; infant mortality by a third. Quick to spot a resonant date in the c...

If you take seriously our obligation to address the problems of the poorest of the world's poor, Nicholas Kristof od the New York Times is a must read. Why? Because he focuses on the reality of the problems of the poorest of the poor. His most recent column is an excellent example. He notes that while AIS is a huge issue in Africa, there are other health problems that affect far more people that are being ignored: AIDS is the disease in the global spotlight, capturing celebrity attention and billions of dollars in treatment programs — and that’s terrific, because it still kills almost three million people a year. But it’s also time to recalibrate our efforts and devote more money to other ailments. Some 40 million people have H.I.V. or AIDS, and 600 million have hookworms. Here in Congo, one study found that 82 percent of children have worms, and partly as a consequence 70 percent are anemic. It often costs hundreds of dollars a year to treat a person with AIDS, continuing for as ...