Should you donate differently?
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0:01 - 0:02I suspect that
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0:02 - 0:04every aid worker in Africa
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0:04 - 0:06comes to a time in her career
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0:06 - 0:09when she wants to take all
the money for her project — -
0:09 - 0:12maybe it's a school or a training program —
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0:12 - 0:14pack it in a suitcase,
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0:14 - 0:18get on a plane flying over the
poorest villages in the country, -
0:18 - 0:21and start throwing that money out the window.
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0:21 - 0:23Because to a veteran aid worker,
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0:23 - 0:26the idea of putting cold, hard cash
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0:26 - 0:29into the hands of the poorest people on Earth
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0:29 - 0:31doesn't sound crazy,
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0:31 - 0:35it sounds really satisfying.
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0:35 - 0:38I had that moment right about the 10-year mark,
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0:38 - 0:40and luckily, that's also when I learned
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0:40 - 0:44that this idea actually exists,
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0:44 - 0:48and it might be just what the aid system needs.
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0:48 - 0:51Economists call it an unconditional cash transfer,
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0:51 - 0:53and it's exactly that: It's cash given
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0:53 - 0:55with no strings attached.
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0:55 - 0:57Governments in developing countries
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0:57 - 0:58have been doing this for decades,
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0:58 - 1:01and it's only now, with more evidence
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1:01 - 1:04and new technology that it's possible
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1:04 - 1:08to make this a model for delivering aid.
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1:08 - 1:11It's a pretty simple idea, right?
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1:11 - 1:15Well, why did I spend a decade doing other stuff
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1:15 - 1:17for the poor?
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1:17 - 1:21Honestly, I believed that I could do more good
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1:21 - 1:23with money for the poor
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1:23 - 1:25than the poor could do for themselves.
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1:25 - 1:27I held two assumptions:
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1:27 - 1:29One, that poor people are poor in part
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1:29 - 1:31because they're uneducated and
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1:31 - 1:33don't make good choices;
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1:33 - 1:36two is that we then need people like me
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1:36 - 1:40to figure out what they need and get it to them.
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1:40 - 1:44It turns out, the evidence says otherwise.
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1:44 - 1:47In recent years, researchers have been studying
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1:47 - 1:50what happens when we give poor people cash.
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1:50 - 1:53Dozens of studies show across the board
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1:53 - 1:56that people use cash transfers
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1:56 - 1:58to improve their own lives.
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1:58 - 2:01Pregnant women in Uruguay buy better food
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2:01 - 2:03and give birth to healthier babies.
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2:03 - 2:06Sri Lankan men invest in their businesses.
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2:06 - 2:09Researchers who studied our work in Kenya
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2:09 - 2:12found that people invested in a range of assets,
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2:12 - 2:16from livestock to equipment
to home improvements, -
2:16 - 2:18and they saw increases in income
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2:18 - 2:20from business and farming
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2:20 - 2:24one year after the cash was sent.
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2:24 - 2:27None of these studies found that people
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2:27 - 2:29spend more on drinking or smoking
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2:29 - 2:32or that people work less.
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2:32 - 2:36In fact, they work more.
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2:36 - 2:39Now, these are all material needs.
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2:39 - 2:42In Vietnam, elderly recipients used
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2:42 - 2:47their cash transfers to pay for coffins.
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2:47 - 2:51As someone who wonders if Maslow got it wrong,
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2:51 - 2:55I find this choice to prioritize spiritual needs
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2:55 - 2:58deeply humbling.
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2:58 - 3:00I don't know if I would have chosen to give food
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3:00 - 3:03or equipment or coffins,
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3:03 - 3:06which begs the question:
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3:06 - 3:09How good are we at allocating resources
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3:09 - 3:11on behalf of the poor?
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3:11 - 3:14Are we worth the cost?
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3:14 - 3:15Again, we can look at empirical evidence
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3:15 - 3:18on what happens when we give people stuff
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3:18 - 3:21of our choosing.
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3:21 - 3:24One very telling study looked at a program in India
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3:24 - 3:27that gives livestock to the so-called ultra-poor,
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3:27 - 3:31and they found that 30 percent of recipients
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3:31 - 3:35had turned around and sold the
livestock they had been given -
3:35 - 3:39for cash.
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3:39 - 3:40The real irony is,
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3:40 - 3:43for every 100 dollars worth of assets
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3:43 - 3:45this program gave someone,
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3:45 - 3:50they spent another 99 dollars to do it.
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3:50 - 3:53What if, instead, we use technology to put cash,
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3:53 - 3:58whether from aid agencies or from any one of us
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3:58 - 4:02directly into a poor person's hands.
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4:02 - 4:04Today, three in four Kenyans use mobile money,
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4:04 - 4:07which is basically a bank account that can run
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4:07 - 4:09on any cell phone.
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4:09 - 4:12A sender can pay a 1.6 percent fee
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4:12 - 4:14and with the click of a button
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4:14 - 4:17send money directly to a recipient's account
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4:17 - 4:20with no intermediaries.
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4:20 - 4:23Like the technologies that are disrupting industries
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4:23 - 4:25in our own lives,
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4:25 - 4:27payments technology in poor countries
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4:27 - 4:30could disrupt aid.
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4:30 - 4:33It's spreading so quickly that it's possible
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4:33 - 4:35to imagine reaching billions
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4:35 - 4:38of the world's poor this way.
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4:38 - 4:40That's what we've started to do at GiveDirectly.
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4:40 - 4:42We're the first organization
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4:42 - 4:45dedicated to providing cash transfers to the poor.
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4:45 - 4:50We've sent cash to 35,000
people across rural Kenya -
4:50 - 4:51and Uganda
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4:51 - 4:54in one-time payments of 1,000 dollars
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4:54 - 4:57per family.
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4:57 - 4:59So far, we've looked for the poorest people
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4:59 - 5:02in the poorest villages, and in this part of the world,
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5:02 - 5:04they're the ones living in homes
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5:04 - 5:05made of mud and thatch,
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5:05 - 5:08not cement and iron.
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5:08 - 5:10So let's say that's your family.
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5:10 - 5:12We show up at your door with an Android phone.
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5:12 - 5:15We'll get your name, take your photo
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5:15 - 5:16and a photo of your hut
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5:16 - 5:18and grab the GPS coordinates.
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5:18 - 5:21That night, we send all the data to the cloud,
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5:21 - 5:23and each piece gets checked
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5:23 - 5:25by an independent team
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5:25 - 5:28using, for one example, satellite images.
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5:28 - 5:30Then, we'll come back,
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5:30 - 5:32we'll sell you a basic cell phone
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5:32 - 5:35if you don't have one already,
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5:35 - 5:37and a few weeks later,
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5:37 - 5:39we send money to it.
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5:39 - 5:41Something that five years ago
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5:41 - 5:42would have seemed impossible
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5:42 - 5:45we can now do efficiently
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5:45 - 5:47and free of corruption.
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5:47 - 5:50The more cash we give to the poor,
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5:50 - 5:53and the more evidence we have that it works,
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5:53 - 5:56the more we have to reconsider
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5:56 - 5:58everything else we give.
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5:58 - 6:02Today, the logic behind aid is too often,
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6:02 - 6:05well, we do at least some good.
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6:05 - 6:06When we're complacent
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6:06 - 6:09with that as our bar,
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6:09 - 6:11when we tell ourselves that giving aid
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6:11 - 6:14is better than no aid at all,
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6:14 - 6:17we tend to invest inefficiently,
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6:17 - 6:21in our own ideas that strike us as innovative,
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6:21 - 6:23on writing reports,
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6:23 - 6:27on plane tickets and SUVs.
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6:27 - 6:29What if the logic was,
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6:29 - 6:34will we do better than cash given directly?
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6:34 - 6:36Organizations would have to prove
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6:36 - 6:38that they're doing more good for the poor
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6:38 - 6:41than the poor can do for themselves.
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6:41 - 6:44Of course, giving cash won't create public goods
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6:44 - 6:49like eradicating disease or
building strong institutions, -
6:49 - 6:51but it could set a higher bar
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6:51 - 6:54for how we help individual families
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6:54 - 6:57improve their lives.
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6:57 - 6:59I believe in aid.
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6:59 - 7:02I believe most aid is better than just
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7:02 - 7:04throwing money out of a plane.
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7:04 - 7:06I am also absolutely certain
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7:06 - 7:09that a lot of aid today
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7:09 - 7:12isn't better than giving directly to the poor.
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7:12 - 7:16I hope that one day, it will be.
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7:16 - 7:18Thank you.
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7:18 - 7:22(Applause)
- Title:
- Should you donate differently?
- Speaker:
- Joy Sun
- Description:
-
Technology allows us to give cash directly to the poorest people on the planet. Should we do it? In this thought-provoking talk, veteran aid worker Joy Sun explores two ways to help the poor.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 07:35
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Should you donate differently? | ||
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Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Should you donate differently? | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Should you donate differently? | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Should you donate differently? | ||
Madeleine Aronson accepted English subtitles for Should you donate differently? | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for Should you donate differently? | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for Should you donate differently? |