Every year at Project Redwood, we learn about a diversity of ideas for abating extreme poverty, mostly submitted by young, creative social entrepreneurs. We debate their workability and impact, collectively drawing on our own business and personal experiences. But what do other organizations and experts think are the best ways to arrest and diminish poverty? Here are links to a few articles with some interesting ideas.
Jeffrey Sachs: Go With the Grain
In a video lecture, economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs argues that the inputs and infrastructure needed to boost crop yields of small holder farmers are key to breakthroughs in reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. “The yields remain low, and year after year, the farmers get a very, very meager income and farm families face tremendous bouts of hunger,” Sachs says.
Jim Yong Kim: Start at Conception
“In sub-Saharan Africa, some 36 percent of children are stunted,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim reported in 2015, “if your brain won’t let you learn and adapt in a fast changing world, you won’t prosper.” Read his rationale for a focus on pre-natal care, early childhood development, and education in a lecture delivered at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Paul Romer: A Neo-Medieval Idea?
A 2010 article in The Atlantic explores former Stanford GSB Professor Paul Romer’s idea for charter cities, where developed governments lease and oversee chunks of territory in developing countries, as a means to combat poverty. Romer invokes the development of Hong Kong as an example. “In a sense, Britain inadvertently, through its actions in Hong Kong, did more to reduce world poverty than all the aid programs that we’ve undertaken in the last century,” he says. Read about his pursuit of the idea in Madagascar.
Tina Rosenberg: Particularly Effective Programs
Pulitzer Prize winning author Tina Rosenberg lists her top eight poverty fighting programs in a 2006 New York Times opinion piece. “Universal vaccination is cost-effective foreign aid at its best,” she says. Rosenberg also advocates for “bribing the poor” to incent behaviors and for cutting the cost and bureaucracy of granting title to the poor for their land, businesses and other assets. She includes an interesting chronicle of the genesis of micro-credit.
Bruce Wydick: Peer Review
Bruce Wydick, Economics and International Studies Professor at the University of San Francisco, in 2012 surveyed peers on their views about the effectiveness of various poverty-reducing programs. How did clean water, de-worming, and farm animal donation programs rate? Read his February 2012 entry in the World Bank blog to find out. Wydick himself in part concludes, “There appears to be almost an inverse relationship between marketing hype and rigorously measured impacts.”