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Category: Development

Published October 5, 2011

Eye Disease and Development?

You read that right: Eye disease and development. I was intrigued when I saw that it was the title of a new working paper (the link opens a .pdf document) on the NEP-DEV mailing list. After reading the abstract, the title made a lot more sense:

This research advances the hypothesis that cross-country variation in the historical incidence of eye disease has influenced the current global distribution of per capita income. The theory is that pervasive eye disease diminished the incentive to accumulate skills, thereby delaying the
fertility transition and the take-off to sustained economic growth. In order to estimate the influence from eye disease incidence empirically, we draw on an important fact from the field of epidemiology: Exposure to solar ultraviolet B radiation (UVB-R) is an underlying determinant of several forms of eye disease; the most important being cataract, which is currently the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Using a satellite-based measure of UVB-R, we document that societies more exposed to UVB-R are poorer and underwent the fertility transition with a significant delay compared to the forerunners. These findings are robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of climate and geography controls. Moreover, using a global data set on economic activity for all terrestrial grid cells we show that the link between UVB-R and economic development survives the inclusion of country fixed effect.

I have not had a chance to read the paper yet, but I wonder just how unpredictable UVB-R is within a given society, and so whether it is truly exogenous to economic growth. This is a compelling finding nevertheless.

Published October 3, 2011

Resources for Development Students

The Guardian has put together a page of resources for students of development policy.

Those resources include a reading list for those who are new to the topic, a list of people to follow on Twitter, and a guide to publicly available development data.

Well worth checking out, especially if you are thinking of studying development in graduate school or if you have a term paper to write in a development class this semester.

Published September 28, 2011

Development Inventiveness

My wife’s a Mennonite, and they had programs in Bangladesh. It had hit me between the eyes that homeless people in Denver were living on $500 a month, but there were people overseas living on $30 a month. So I took a trip to Bangladesh.

Some farmers were using hand pumps, but biomechanically, that’s a lousy way to raise water. A Mennonite guy had invented a rower pump that would pull up enough to water a half-acre of vegetables. They had installed 2,000 over five years, and those farmers seemed to be making a lot of money, so I said, “Why don’t we do a project, with an objective of selling 25,000 a year?”

We hit that pretty quickly. One or two Mennonites objected — they considered the idea of selling something to poor people immoral. But we kept at it, and then we found the treadle pump. It was brilliantly simple, it could be manufactured by local workshops, and a local driller could dig a 40-foot well and install it for $25. Studies showed that farmers made $100 in one season on that investment.

That’s from a New York Times interview with Dr. Paul Polak, an inventor who has spent a good amount of time creating devices to improve the lives of the world’s poorest individuals. Here is his answer, when asked about the biggest mistake made by aid and development agencies:

As we were developing our pump, the World Bank was subsidizing deep-well diesel pumps that could cover 40 acres. The theory was that you’d get a macroeconomic benefit, but it was also very destructive to social justice. The big pumps were handed out by government agents; the government agent was bribeable. The pump would go to the biggest landholder, and he’d become a waterlord.

Interesting throughout, as they say. I am a bit skeptical about the “studies show” bit above — skeptical about what the studies show, not that the studies actually exist — but selling 25,000 units is a reasonably good test of the welfare impacts of Polak’s treadle pump.