This month's Atlantic Monthly has a controversial article about breastfeeding, specifically making arguments against breastfeeding. The arguments are of two types. One is social and normative, and the other is on the evidence. My thoughts, naturally, are on the evidence. The journalist makes a classic error in understanding and interpreting "treatment effects." Here is a clip:
This seems to be our week to blog about Bill Easterly's blog. Although in this one, we aren't going to agree as much. I was really excited to see his report about Women's Trust until I got to the final paragraph:
We were pleased to see Bill Easterly highlight The Hunger Project, a partner of our's in Ghana, on his blog, Aid Watch. In fact, it wasn't necessary for skepticism to take a full day off because there is a rigorous evaluation of the project underway.
Banks in the developed world know a lot about applicants before deciding whether or not to lend them money. The transactions take place within a massive flow of detailed financial information including tax returns, credit scores, loan applications, and bank statements. An ocean of personal data follows people throughout their lives and determines their access to credit.
Here in Puebla we are currently conducting the first follow-up survey for an impact evaluation studying a state-sponsored program that aims to spur growth among small businesses. We have spent the past five weeks contacting all the firms in the sample and asking them to participate in a forty-five minute survey to measure the growth, or lack thereof, of the business since the program started 12 months ago. Easier said than done.
We at IPA in Tamale, Ghana moved into our new house/office a few weeks ago, and our arrival has caused quite a stir in the local community. Unlike many foreign non-governmental organizations, we aren’t working in a plush air-conditioned compound on the outskirts of town. Instead, ours is a fairly modest (though perfectly comfortable) house in a real urban community. We are surrounded by traditional round clay-walled houses, by goats and guinea fowl roaming in the streets, by calls to prayer from numerous local mosques, and by crowds of excitable children 18 hours a day.
A recent post from Alex in the Philippines addressed the common uses of microfinance loans, which leads logically to two follow-up questions. How do we actually know with any certainty what microfinance clients do with their loans given that money is fungible? And, secondly, should we care as long as the loans are paid back?
A frequent question that I get from friends and family members about the microfinance projects I work on for IPA is, “What do people actually do with the loans?”
The Microcredit Summit Campaign recently announced that they hit a big milestone. They counted that more than 100 million of the world’s poorest families received a microloan in 2007.
Researchers and financial analysts are still sorting through causes of the financial crisis. One target is the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which requires that banks to lend to low and moderate income people in the communities where they take deposits.
