NPR: How Do You Know If Aid Really Works? Turns Out … We Often Don’t
“…[F]or decades, questions [of aid effectiveness] have been left unanswered. Instead health and development aid for the world’s poorest has largely been designed based on what seems reasonable, rather than what can be proved with hard evidence. Since the early 2000s, however, a growing movement of social science researchers have been pushing policymakers to do ‘impact evaluations’ of their programs. That’s a phrase used in the world of aid that means checking whether your program is achieving its ultimate objective — say raising incomes or reducing disease…” (Aizenman, 1/21).