“[F]inally, we’re getting some reliable data suggesting how to” help people in developing countries because of economists, who “provide answers that are rigorously field-tested, akin to the way drugs are tested in randomized controlled trials, yielding results that are particularly credible and persuasive,” Nicholas Kristof writes in his New York Times column. 

Kristof gives two examples of programs that produced measurable results: deworming African children “resulted in 25 percent less absenteeism” in school and warning Kenyan teenager girls against having sex with older men helped protect them from HIV (5/18).