If you find this persuasive, consider donating to http://www.givedirectly.org/, which performs unconditional cash transfers to the poorest people in Kenya.
Give Directly is the subject of this writeup[1] on GiveWell, and this excellent episode[2] of This American Life.
More from one of cjbprime's sources: GiveWell does a lot of evaluation of charities, trying to find where an individual donor's dollar can make the most difference. They hold donations to GiveDirectly to a pretty high standard, comparing it against stuff like antimalarial bednets and deworming, and think it comes out looking alright. In addition to cjbprime's link, they've written:
2) The Case For Cash--posted after their recommendation of GiveDirectly, talking about how a one-time cash transfer can have long-term benefits and how giving to the third-world poor differs from giving to the U.S. poor: http://blog.givewell.org/2012/12/26/the-case-for-cash-2/
They produce a lot of thoughtful research with a lot of effort to ground their recommendations in reality--browsing around their site a bit is a pretty rewarding use of time if you're interested in this kind of thing.
> They hold donations to GiveDirectly to a pretty high standard, comparing it against stuff like antimalarial bednets and deworming, and think it comes out looking alright.
There's this line of reasoning (coming from African economists that have spoken out against the latter two forms of aid[1]) that if you give the poor money, they can spend it on antimalarial bednets and deworming themselves, which is is effectively the same as the former but with the added benefit of bootstrapping the local economy (provided the facilities are there of course, but that is more likely to develop if the local population has money...).
Of course that's a gross oversimplification of a complicated problem, but it's an interesting counterpoint to traditional forms of aid.
I think there are a couple of general reasons bednets or deworming (and vaccines) are still good things to deliver via aid program rather than sell, without taking away from the awesomeness of GiveDirectly. (And I know you're saying you know such reasons might exist, but I think it's worthwhile to go into them:)
One is logistics: a program to reach everybody unlocks some economies of scale. Much of the cost of these programs is just getting supplies and people to all of these remote villages with impassable roads, the occasional corrupt official or militia, etc.[1] Some of that is effectively fixed cost, and doesn't vary much whether you have two boxes of deworming pills in the back of your truck or 20. The cost per person is lower if you can amortize those fixed costs across everyone.
The other is that sometimes active encouragement is worth it. Even rich countries have policies to try and get folks to vaccinate and for other health goals like getting people off cigarettes or fighting obesity. In poor countries there are two further reasons a push could help: there's not enough accurate, trusted medical info (not even high school bio for everyone; that's part of how "traditional healers" survive), and the cost of a vaccine feels a lot higher.[2]
All that said, I get the frustration that there are so many big problems aid like this _doesn't_ directly help with. There's partly just a problem of scale--you need a lot more resources (whether investment or aid or what) to deal with the lack of infrastructure, etc. But I do think in the meantime, the science and to some extent plain old arithmetic indicate that basic health programs are still doing a ton of good.
[1] Digression, but if you want to read about what it's like to take the long way to a remote old tin mining town in the DRC, http://www.amazon.com/dp/1851689656/ is amazing
PM also followed an American building contractor who was attempting to build a schoolhouse in Haiti. The guy landed in the country pretty gung-ho, ready to apply his extensive experience to building something relatively simple. He had never done aidwork in a developing country. After many delays and run-ins with corruption, he did manage to complete it, but he concluded that just giving them money would have been more efficient.
I might step on a few people's politically correct toes for saying this, but based on my experience with traveling through Africa I'd say that the richer people think you are, the more corruption you have to deal with, and that the "whiter" you look, the richer people presume you are.
(And if we're performing a comparison, neither do other developed countries compared to the people being targeted by Give Directly's program. We should give to wherever it will do the most good, right?)
> We should give to wherever it will do the most good, right?
It's not obvious that the welfare of Kenyans is more important than, for example, the welfare of Americans or Swiss.
> Switzerland doesn't need the money
I don't know much about Switzerland but the same sort of rationale could be used for directing charitable donations to Africa instead of America. Meanwhile, a lot of people in the United States suffer in various ways. The "that country has so much money that people there certainly don't need any donations" line of thought is very obviously wrong.
What's the phrase? "One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens."
Yes, I do think it's an obvious logical implication of the above that if you want to donate to where it will have the largest impact on welfare, you should be donating to Africa instead of the US. As a result, I live in the US and do donate to effective aid organizations that aim to help people in extreme poverty, who are usually in Africa. I don't think there's anything very obviously wrong with this.
Since you couldn't be bothered to read the article before leaving what must apparently be a wisecrack: it was a controlled experiment using groups.
> Blattman, an assistant professor of international and public affairs and political science, recently completed a four-year study of a government-run program in northern Uganda that gave cash to groups of young people so they could learn a trade and start their own businesses. The results surprised him and convinced him that outright grants are the best way to give aid.
> The program, funded by a loan from the World Bank, was designed to boost the Ugandan economy after 20 years of civil strife by encouraging young people—ages 16 to 35—to move from agriculture to skilled trades. The grants were only about $400 per person, the equivalent of a year’s income for most people in the area. To get the cash, applicants had to form a group with others in their village and submit a proposal showing how they planned to use the money, but there was no follow-up to make sure they used it for that purpose.
> Grant recipients became carpenters, metal workers, tailors and hair stylists. Some of the money—about 10 to 20 percent—went for training, either at an institute or as an apprentice to a local artisan, but most of it was used to purchase tools and raw materials. Some of those small businesses grew large enough to hire paid employees, improving the economic situation in an entire village.
My only point is that to me, giving cash to Kenyans and giving cash to beggars seems morally equivalent. Not saying you shouldn't do either but I do think if you give Kenyans cash but have qualms with giving beggars money, well I don't think that makes much sense.
I believe there are people with the necessary character to be economically successful, but who have never had the economic opportunity to move beyond their basic needs and are therefore poor. I also believe there are people who have had many economic opportunities, but have squandered them, and are therefore poor.
In the context of the adage "give a man a fish and he'll be fed for a day, teach him to fish and he'll be fed for life," one can expect cash given to the first group to be spent on fishing rods, while cash given to the second to be spent on fish.
I find giving cash to the first group to be morally different than giving cash to the second group, and I suspect that poor Kenyan villagers are likely to belong to the first group, while beggars in wealthy developed countries are likely to belong to the second.
If giving $20 to a Kenyan does more good, and you think the most moral thing is to direct your efforts where they do the most good, then there's how they're not morally equivalent.
Not really. Giving beggars has the side effect of incentivising begging, which many people would not consider to be a morally neutral decision.
One can also reasonably judge that on the balance of probability, aid money will almost certainly have a significant positive effect on the lives of Kenyans. The effect of a comparable amount of cash on the lives of beggars in Western countries is much less unequivocally positive (potentially a net negative if its spent on substances that harm the beggar's health, or the income disincentives them from seeking programs that aim to help them with more than just their next meal)
Most people measure morality by looking at the difference between consequences as a result of Action X or Action Y. It's fairly obvious that giving $20 to someone making $1/day is likely to have better consequences than giving it to someone making $40/day (or who has more than the purchasing power of $40/day of social aid available to them). That's why we say the actions are morally different.
I'm surprised you think there's no moral difference. There would be a moral difference between saving someone's life with $20 and treating someone to a meal at Starbucks for $20, right?
Morally they're equivalent, but practically they're not.
While I would like those beggars to receive money, I don't want them to be the exclusive recipients of cash aid, excluding the many poor people who don't happen to be actually begging on the street. I want an organized program that takes the available cash (donations or taxes) and distributes it in a "fair" way among the poor. What constitutes fair is difficult to answer, but I certainly don't have enough information available to make that decision right when someone asks me for money.
No, the opposite. Give Directly finds the very poorest people in a village (as judged by the materials their house is made from), and the Uganda study used self-selected entrepreneurs. Both of these were trying to maximize the impact of each dollar by giving the money to the people for whom it would do the most good.
Giving money to a beggar in the US would not do nearly as much good, both because the US has excellent safety nets (hospitals that will treat you, food banks) and because everything in the US costs more (so you can provide less of it to someone in need per dollar).
Various reasons - first of all - in the developed world there are social safety networks that should take care of the less fortunate. So a beggar on the street means my government has failed.
Second - begging is lucrative industry in parts of the world.
Third poor != beggar. The people that they gave money to were poor but were also young, employed (in agriculture) and integrated into society.
Give Directly is the subject of this writeup[1] on GiveWell, and this excellent episode[2] of This American Life.
[1]: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-dir...
[2]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/503/i...