Tim Harford has a good analysis of the latest research on micro-lending's effect on poverty.  The basic result is that the near and medium term effects are extremely modest.  This isn't too surprising given the relative magnitudes of the intervention and the problem. But there was always hope that a...

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/8194089[/vimeo] I just saw the most important talk I have seen in 300+ TED, Pop!Tech, etc talks that I've watched.  And at the risk of hyperbole, I will say that the worst case scenario is that Daniel Nocera simply wins a Nobel Prize (and yes, I'm willing to bet at even odds that...

Yes, I've decided to wade into the health care waters again.  One of the problems with the current debate is that it confounds several distinct problems.  So I'm planning to briefly address each one individually in the hopes of achieving some clarity.  First up, the uninsured. Most of us don't want...

Mike Ritchey of mountain bike fame is helping Rwandan coffee farmers cut the transport time (increasing their selling price) from the field to the washing stations by providing them with custom "Coffee Bikes" on a micro loan basis. These bikes replace the wooden bikes (including wheels) that they have been...

Given everything I hear about obesity stats in the U.S. and malnutrition in the developing world, the last thing I was expecting to find in my inbox this morning was a plea to join a Facebook cause to help end hunger in America.  Really? I'm usually not skeptical in this way, and I'm loath to focus on the...

What's fascinating to me about this is not that it works so well and or that there might actually be support in the Obama administration for doing it on a national scale, but rather that there has not been a backlash against it yet.  What are the odds that something like this will actually get implemented?...

As you've probably figured out by now, I prefer to base decisions on statistically significant evidence.  However, in order to gather such evidence, you must have hypotheses in the form of testable models.  If the models you try to test are divorced from reality on the ground, your results will be useless...

This year for his birthday, Eben decided to host this webinar and invited all his contacts to join him online in lieu of a party and gifts.  What a brilliant concept and even more brilliant execution.  Eben (and Scott Brandon Hoffman, founder of CharityWater.org) truly epitomize the new philanthropy. ...

One of the more inspiring talks at Pop!Tech this year was Paul Polak's talk about serving the "other 90%" with life-saving and transformative products using a for-profit micro-franchise model that scales.  Paul's vision and track-record speaks for itself, check it...

I recently alerted Rafe to the latest Copenhagen Consensus, which aims to set priorities for the most cost effective interventions to improve global welfare. Items (1) and (3) were micronutrient supplementation and fortification. Rafe expressed concern that these were a "band aid approach". After pondering...

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I hope you'll pay particular attention to interventions where Rafe and I agree something should be done. Whenever such agreement emerges, we plan on letting you know. Hopefully, we'll inspire you to support them as well. As it happens, we have just identified such...

Pop Quiz: Which is a bigger determinant of cancer mortality in America, being poor or being black? According to Dr. Harold Freeman of the National Cancer Institute, poverty is the bigger factor today, but it hasn't always been so: During  250 years of slavery (1619-1865) and to a lesser extent during the...

Here are some notes that I took at TED 2008.  I have a bunch more on each of the speakers individually which I may post as time permits.  Let me know if you want me to expand any of the notes below into a full post. Themes TED sessions have their own explicit themes, but I detected a few implicit themes...

Mobile phones fight poverty [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixjxvzb2-Fw] Click here for Discussion...