06-MAR-B-10
GLOBAL PROGRAMS TO END POVERTY:
“PLANNERS” VERSUS “SEARCHERS”
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March 19, 2006
'The White Man's Burden,' by William Easterly
The Poverty Puzzle
Review by VIRGINIA POSTREL
MALARIA infects 300 million to 500 million people a
year, causing severe pain and debilitation. A million of those taken ill die,
mostly infants and young children. Of the deaths, which amount to a child every
30 seconds, more than 80 percent occur in the poor countries of
So why don't we just buy the nets and medicines? If
we cared as much about the poor as Bono does, couldn't the rich countries wipe
out malaria and also eliminate the world's worst poverty?
It's not that simple, William Easterly argues in
"The White Man's Burden." Take those mosquito nets. When aid agencies
hand them out in poor countries, he writes, "nets are often diverted to
the black market . . . or wind up being used as fishing nets or wedding
veils." Free nets don't get to the people who need them.
But in rural
The program, Easterly reports, has "increased
the nationwide average of children under 5 sleeping under nets from 8 percent
in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004. . . . A follow-up survey found nearly universal
use of the nets by those who paid for them." By contrast, when a Zambian
program handed out free nets, "70 percent of the recipients didn't
use" them. Charging for nets may sound hardhearted, but prices provide
vital information about commitment.
The world's poor need more focused, trial-and-error
programs like the Malawian net distribution and fewer ambitious plans to cure
poverty, Easterly argues. There are two tragedies of the world's poor. The
first is the one we hear about: that so many people suffer so much for lack of
inexpensive remedies.
The second, he says, "is the tragedy in which
the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and
still had not managed to get 12-cent medicines to children to prevent half of
all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to
get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had
not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child
deaths." The West is not stingy. It is ineffective.
A professor at
In "The White Man's Burden," Easterly
turns from incentives to the subtler problems of knowledge. If we truly want to
help the poor, rather than just congratulate ourselves for generosity, he
argues, we rich Westerners have to give up our grand ambitions. Piecemeal
problem-solving has the best chance of success.
He contrasts the traditional "Planner"
approach of most aid projects with the "Searcher" approach that works
so well in the markets and democracies of the West. Searchers treat
problem-solving as an incremental discovery process, relying on competition and
feedback to figure out what works.
"A Planner thinks he already knows the
answers," Easterly writes. "A Searcher admits he doesn't know the
answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of
political, social, historical, institutional and technological factors."
Planners trust outside experts. Searchers emphasize homegrown solutions.
Local details matter, Easterly argues again and
again. Consider a project to teach farmers in
In fact, the locals already knew the area wasn't
good for farming. "The project managers complained that the local people
were 'defeatist' and didn't 'think of themselves as farmers,' " Easterly
reports. "Perhaps the locals didn't consider themselves farmers because
they were not farmers - they were migrant workers in South African mines."
Failure is, of course, part of trial-and-error
learning. The problem is that aid programs rarely get enough feedback, whether
from competition or complaint. Instead, Easterly notes, advocates measure
success by how much money rich countries spend. Praising the G-8 industrialized
nations for doubling aid to Africa, he says, is like reviewing
Easterly acknowledges that not all foreign aid has
failed. In public health and school attendance, where results are relatively
easy to measure, focused efforts have made a huge difference. The easier it is
to see whether aid is working, he argues, the more likely it is to succeed.
"The White Man's Burden" does not match
"The Elusive Quest for Growth" as a tour de force. Easterly is doing
something harder here: not merely cataloging past failures but trying to
suggest a more promising approach. Unfortunately, his alternative is still
underdeveloped, devolving at times into slogans.
After all, Searchers plan, too. The question is not
whether to plan, but who makes the plans, how they are changed and where
feedback comes from. "The White Man's Burden" underplays the
essential role of competition, not only in markets but between political
jurisdictions.
Easterly is better at documenting the failures of
planning than analyzing the successes of searching. He examines the problems of
post-Soviet
Easterly is understandably skittish about
generalizations, but extracting lessons from experience is quite compatible
with decentralized searching. Businesses in radically different industries
learn from one another. Searching includes discovering the day's best
practices. Not every situation is unique.
Still, "The White Man's Burden," like
"The Elusive Quest for Growth," is an important book. Easterly asks
the right questions, combining compassion with clear-eyed empiricism. Bono and
his devotees should heed what he has to say.
Virginia Postrel is the
author of "The Future and Its Enemies" and "The Substance of
Style."
--
Christopher Tate
703-836-8905
chris@wfa.net
http://wfa.net
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