On October 14, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Abigit BenNagy, Esther Duflo and Michael Kramer will be awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize inEconomics in recognition of their "reduction in global poverty"Experimental project. "

Why do most poverty alleviation policies end in failure? Following are theauthors of Abigit Benaghi and Esther Dufloy's "The Nature ofPoverty".

Do you really understand the poor?

Every year 9 million children die before their fifth birthday. Insub-Saharan Africa, the maternal mortality rate is 33%, compared with 0.018% indeveloped countries. The average life expectancy of at least 25 countriesin the world does not exceed 55 years, most of which are in sub-SaharanAfrica. In India alone, more than 50 million school-age children do noteven understand simple texts.

After reading the above article, maybe you just want to put this book aside andnot think about the world's poverty events, because the problem seems too broadand difficult. However, the purpose of writing this book is to advise younot to do that.

A recent experiment at the University of Pennsylvania has shown that we areappalled by the importance of this issue. Researchers give each student $5, ask them to fill out a short questionnaire, and then show them a leafletasking them to donate to Save One, one of the global charities. There aretwo different types of flyers. Some students saw leaflets like this:

Food shortages in Malawi affect more than 3 million children; in Zambia, severedrought since 2000 has reduced food production by 42%. As a result, 3million Zambians will face hunger, 4 million Angolans (one third of the Angolanpopulation) will be forced to leave their homes, and more than 11 million Ethiopianswill desperately need food assistance.

Other students saw a little girl on the leaflet, and the words:

Rosia is a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa. She lives in extreme povertyand is even at risk of hunger. However, your financial assistance will improveher life. With the support of you and other good people, Save the Childrenwill help Rosia and her family and others in the community so she has enoughfood, education, and basic health knowledge.

The average student who saw the first leaflet donated $ 1.16. Unlike thefirst leaflet, the second leaflet shows the plight of one person rather thanmillions. The average student who watched the flyer donated $2.83. In this way, students are willing to take some responsibility forRosija, but they are discouraged when they face a wide range of global issues.

Next, researchers randomly selected students and told them that people don'twant to pay attention to general information. They are more likely todonate to specific victims and then show students two leaflets. Theresults showed that the average student who read the first leaflet donated $1.26 each, which was similar to the money donated by students who did not knowthe phenomenon in advance.

However, after seeing the second leaflet, the students donated an average ofonly $ 1.36 per person after learning about this phenomenon, which is far lessthan the money donated by students who did not know thephenomenon. Encouraging students to rethink will make them less generousto Rosia, but not more generous to every Malian.

The student response is a classic example of how most people feel when facingissues such as poverty. Our instinctive response was generosity,especially with a 7-year-old girl in difficulty.

However, like students at the University of Pennsylvania, we often loseconfidence after rethinking: the money we donate is a drop in the ocean, andthe security of these donations is not guaranteed. This book will make yourethink how to get rid of the "poverty problem is difficult to solve"feeling, and re-examine this challenge from a series of specificproblems. These problems can be solved one by one as long as they arecorrectly positioned and truly understood by people.

Unfortunately, the debate on poverty often doesn't start like this. Manyexperts talked again and again, instead of discussing how to fight dysenteryand dengue fever most effectively, but focused on those "bigproblems": What is the ultimate cause of poverty? To what extentshould we trust the free market? Can the poor benefit fromdemocracy? What role can foreign aid play? and many more.

Jeffrey Sachs is a UN consultant, director of the Earth Institute at ColumbiaUniversity in New York, and an expert on poverty. His answer to the abovequestion is: poor countries are poor because they are often surrounded by land,the climate is hot, the land is barren, and malaria is raging. As aresult, it will be difficult for them to increase productivity withoutsubstantial initial investment to help these countries solve these localproblems.

However, due to poverty, these countries are unable to pay an investment returnof £ 33,354, which is what economists call a "povertytrap." Unless these issues can be resolved, free markets anddemocracy will not help. Foreign aid is important because it can start avirtuous circle that helps poor countries invest in key areas, therebyincreasing their productivity. The resulting higher income will bring moreinvestment, and the income will spiral up. In his 2005 book The End of Poverty,Sachs said that if rich countries spent $ 195 billion a year to help poorcountries between 2005 and 2025, the problem of poverty could be completelyresolved by the end of 2025.

However, some people still talked a little and thought that the saxophone'sanswer was wrong. William Eastley of Manhattan challenges Sax of New YorkUniversity. With the publication of his books "The End ofPoverty" ("The Elusive Path to Growth") and "Searching inthe Mist of Growth" ("The Burden of Whites"), he has become themost influential of anti-aid activists One of the powerful public figures.

Danbisa Moyo is an economist who has worked at Goldman Sachs and the WorldBank. She agrees with Eastleigh in her book Death Assistance. Theyall think that aid does more harm than good: it prevents people from findingsolutions to their problems, erodes local institutions, weakens their role, andrenders some aid agencies useless.

For poor countries, it is best to follow a simple principle: as long as thereis a free market and appropriate incentives, people can find their ownsolutions and avoid accepting alms from foreigners or theirgovernments. In this sense, those who are pessimistic about aid areactually quite optimistic about how the world works. Eastleigh believesthat the "poverty trap" does not exist.

Who should I trust?

Who should we trust? Do you believe those who believe that aid can solvethe problem or those who believe that aid can only make the problemworse? This problem cannot be solved theoretically, what we need is evidence.

Unfortunately, the data often used to answer big questions cannot betrusted. Striking anecdotes abound, and some events can even be used tosupport any position. For example, Rwanda received a large number ofdonations in the years after the genocide, and the country graduallyprospered. As a result of the development of the national economy, RwandaPresident Paul Kagame started to formulate a policy to stop accepting aid asmuch as possible. So, should we consider this example as proof of the benefitsof assistance (Saxo's point of view), a typical representative of self-reliance(Moyo's point of view), or both?

With no final conclusions for cases like Rwanda, most people who studyphilosophy prefer to compare between many countries. For example, datafrom hundreds of countries around the world show that countries receiving moreaid are not growing faster than others. This is often considered a uselessbasis for aid, but in fact it could mean the opposite. Perhaps aid hassaved some countries from the disaster, and it would have been worse withoutaid. We don't know this, but we only speculate broadly.

However, what do we do without a basis for supporting or opposing aid?