This turns out to be rather frustrating book. The authors set out to tread a path between the ‘aid must be good’ and ‘aid is bad’ views and largely do so. Based more on bottom up rather than top down research (see, for example, Paul Collier’s work for the latter) it suggests where things work and things don’t. The reader is left with the impression that we know more about the latter than the former, which is where the frustration arises.
The authors focus is on areas where randomised trials can show where the best strategy might lie. The first chapters focus on four key areas – food, health, education and family planning. The authors show how & why many simple solutions fail. For example, state health provision fails to be efficient in India because the salaried nurses can get away without turning up much of the time so people end up using private doctors who are badly trained, but at least are always there! Occasionally they are guilty of not joining up their themes. For example, in the health chapter its becomes obvious that part of the solution could be a better educated population, even if that’s easier said than done. But really that’s a minor gripe and they do give a great overview of the current state of knowledge.
I found the chapter on microfinance particularly interesting. It would seem that here the debate between randomised studies and anecdotal evidence is currently at its most active – the authors give an example about the credibility of study results being questioned by the microfinance agencies, who clearly have a vested interest. As we have discussed before, it is now clear that microfinance is not the silver bullet for poverty that it was first hoped. Not every poor person is a budding entrepreneur and, as the book points out, for many people the dream for their children is a steady salaried job. And the authors explain why, even for those with small businesses, microfinance may not be the way out of poverty if they cannot scale up their activities. Fortunately, many can and so it remains a useful tool.
The final chapter on politics & policies at first seemed like a reversion to the top down approach. The results on the benefits of positive discrimination towards women being elected are a fascinating addition to the debate on whether this is a sensible strategy. In local environments it does seem to bring benefits both in terms of the areas which received support from local councils and in terms of making women more electable even when then discrimination is removed.
It may be a frustrating book, but that is only because we’d like to know the answers now. We don’t, and by not pretending that we do the authors have written a fascinating book and hopefully opened some paths to really making things better.