Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

May 19, 2012

a project of ServiceSpace

Can Better Data End Global Poverty?

“Do free bed nets in some countries lead to more cases of malaria? Could anti-parasite pills raise school attendance in one country and have no effect in another? How cheap does preventative care have to be for low-income families to see the doctor? There might not be a perfect way to answer these thorny questions on a country-by-country basis. But some leading scientists think the most rigorous answer comes from what they call “randomized controlled trials.” Last year, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, published a book called Poor Economics (…) it stakes a larger claim against ‘grand universal answers’ and ‘sweeping conclusions’ about poverty.” A leading development economist speaks on the virtues and limitations of a data-driven approach to healing the world’s most intractable problems. { read more }

Be The Change

“Finding non-zero sum solutions to our social problems requires all the imagination we can muster.” A short passage by Alvin Toffler.

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