Kruse Kronicle

More poor people now live in U.S. suburbs than cities

Reuters: More poor people now live in U.S. suburbs than cities

(Reuters) - The number of people living in poverty in U.S. suburbs surpassed the number of poor in cities over the past decade, driven by strong growth in overall suburban populations, according to an analysis released on Monday. ...

... The number of poor people living in suburbs rose 64 percent between 2000 and 2011, reaching 16.4 million, it showed. The number of poor people living in urban areas increased 29 percent to 13.4 million. ...

You Can't Buy Your Way to Social Justice

Christianity Today: You Can't Buy Your Way to Social Justice

I'm afraid of some American Christians.

I am an American, but I haven't lived in the United States in a while. I live in Djibouti, a country in the Horn of Africa, and when you pick me up at the Minneapolis airport, I might invite you to coffee and suggest the wrong place—you know, one that doesn't serve fair-trade coffee. I will arrive wearing the wrong jeans—ones sold by companies that don't offer fair wages. And I won't use the right vocabulary—the language used by Western bloggers to talk about social justice. ...

... If my generation cares so deeply about global issues of justice and poverty that they are willing to change eating, clothing, and living habits, where are they? A significant challenge for nonprofits and ministries remains recruiting people who will commit to serve long-term outside the United States.

I know there are a plethora of good reasons that concerned American Christians can't just uproot and leave the States, from family to health to finances. I know I simplify. But I have a theory about what is partly contributing to the dearth of young Americans willing to spend their lives on behalf of others.

They think they already are.

They think that with their pocketbooks and food choices alone, by sewing their own clothes and purchasing fair-trade coffee, by boycotting Wal-Mart and preaching that as gospel, they have already done their part to address global injustices. ...

... Consumer activism comes with the inherent danger of separating us from the very people we want to serve. To buy fair trade coffee, for example, we might need to drive across town instead of sitting in the corner café where people in our neighborhood mingle. We can buy that fair trade coffee and never know the family in Burundi who grew, harvested, washed, and roasted the beans. And still we can feel that have done our part. ...

... While remaining passionate and continuing to gently educate the ignorant (like me!) about how our purchases affect the world, we also need to ask whether current trends are becoming a convenient excuse not to delve into the complexities of social justice. We need to ask whether our consumer choices distort the words of Jesus, and whether they help us enter relationships or separate us from others.

As Matthew Lee Anderson notes in his recent CT cover story, Christians begin to fulfill the command to love our neighbor as ourselves "not when we do something radical, extreme, over the top, not when we're really spiritual or really committed or really faithful, but when in the daily ebb and flow of life, in our corporate jobs, in our middle-class neighborhoods, on our trips to Yellowstone and Disney World . . . we stop to help those whom we meet in everyday life, reaching out in quiet, practical, and loving ways." ...

There are some people who are deeply committed to social justice but go about it in ways that I think misunderstands the issues involved. I do not doubt their commitment or their sincerity. But there are also wide swathes for whom identifying with a social justice cause as a fashion statement, an identity signifier, communicating to the world how enlightened and moral they are. Digging into the economic intricacies of fair trade coffee to see how ineffectual it is (even damaging) for the poor, or realizing that Wal-Mart's ability to keep the staples of life inexpensive in our society is probably the single most important factor in keeping the cost of living for the poor manageable, or the reality that it is the poor who clamor for a Wal-Mart while their moralistic economic "superiors" block construction, does not sit well with the social justice crowd they seek solidarity with. And that is what too much of this is about -- solidarity with the social justice crowd, not with the poor. It is moralistic elitism from outside and above the poor, not action and contemplation in community with the poor.

Nanoparticle Tech Could Bring Clean Water to Rural Poor

Live Science: Nanoparticle Tech Could Bring Clean Water to Rural Poor

A water purification system that uses nanotechnology to remove bacteria, viruses and other contaminants may be able to deliver clean drinking water to rural communities for less than $3 a year per family, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai, India, developed a purification device that filters water through a specially crafted mixture of nanoparticles to remove harmful contaminants. Their study was published today (May 6) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The device, which is currently being tested in communities in India, could offer an affordable way to provide small families with at least 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of safe drinking water per day, said study co-author Thalappil Pradeep, a professor in the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. ...

The Rise Of Social Entrepreneurship Suggests A Possible Future For Global Capitalism

Forbes: The Rise Of Social Entrepreneurship Suggests A Possible Future For Global Capitalism

... Barely half of Americans polled in 2010 by GlobeScan said they believed in the free-market system, down from 80 percent in 2002. A large majority had lost trust in government. The most recent Edelman Trust Barometer found that trust in business has been below 50 percent for 8 of the past 12 years. Throughout Europe, only small minorities said they believed in free-market capitalism.

Meanwhile, social entrepreneurs are developing innovative business models that blend traditional capitalism with solutions that address the long-term needs of our planet. They are tackling chronic social problems, ranging from healthcare delivery in sub-Saharan Africa to agricultural transformation in East Asia and public-school funding in the United States. Social entrepreneurs are working in close collaboration with local communities, incubating groundbreaking (and often lifesaving) innovations; modeling synergistic partnerships with governments, companies, and traditional charities; and building business models that deploy technology and enable networking to create wins for investors and clients alike. “Social entrepreneurs are mad scientists in the lab,” says Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. “They’re harbingers of new ways of doing business.”

We believe this collaborative approach offers intriguing hints about how enterprises of all sizes can deliver value for themselves and society. Below we suggest four ways in which social entrepreneurs are showing the way forward.

USING PROFIT TO FUND PURPOSE ...

DELIVERING INDIVIDUALIZED PRODUCTS THAT MARRY NEED AND WANT ...

CROWDSOURCING THE SOLUTION ...

WORKING THEMSELVES OUT OF A JOB ...

Poverty And The Power of Economic Growth

There will always be a need for relief aid and charity but economic development is the answer to poverty. Here is a short video that illustrates how it works:

Poor Countries Leading the Way in Economic Growth

"IN recent years poor countries have enjoyed impressive improvements in GDP per person. But in the rich world they have hardly grown at all." Click on the link to see the short video: Economic growth

 
There is also this chart: Poor little rich countries

Unfair Trade

Foreign Affairs: Unfair Trade

The Fair-Trade Movement Does More Harm Than Good

... Until now, any questioning of the fair-trade movement has been limited to the micro level. The movement has faced repeated criticisms, for example, for the relatively expensive fees that producers must pay to get a fair-trade label, which make it ineffective for many poor farmers. Another area of concern is just how lucrative the process is for middlemen and retailers. Finally, several studies show that very little of the premium that consumers pay actually reaches needy producers. Consumers might be surprised to learn that only one or two percent of the retail price of an expensive cup of “ethical” coffee goes directly to poor farmers.

The adverse effects of fair trade are even more worrying at the macro level. First, fair trade deflects attention from real, long-term solutions to rural poverty in developing countries; and second, it has the potential to fragment the world agricultural market and depress wages for non-fair-trade farm workers. ...

... Fair-trade enthusiasts might argue that the world would be better off if the fair-trade market replaced the free-trade one. But in fact, such an outcome would destroy the livelihoods of millions of farmers who do not have the luxury of paying for fair-trade certification. To survive, these farmers would likely have to stop planting basic crops, such as wheat, corn, and rice, and shift to cash crops, such as coffee, tea, and fruits, which could bring in the income for certification. The immediate effect would be a prohibitive hike in food prices. Further, as farmers shift their production, non-fair-trade basic food products would become more vulnerable to price instability caused by supply and demand shocks, because there would be fewer producers willing to take the risk of non-subsidized farming.

If the fair-trade movement eventually came to encompass all categories of agricultural production (including basic food products), the price shocks would be even worse. Rather than responding to market prices, farmers in developing countries would be incentivized to produce whatever products garner the greatest subsidies. With subsidies, not consumer demand, dictating production, consumers in the developed and developing worlds would see further increases in basic food prices. ...

... Self-proclaimed ethical consumers need to start looking reality in the eye. Fair trade is a form of protectionism, and it should not be allowed to hide behind the mask of morality. There is nothing ethical about privileging small groups of producers while the majority are sinking deeper into poverty.

This is one of those topics where a particular activity (buying fair trade goods) feels so worthwhile and yet does harm in ways that are not readibly discernable. When it comes to commodities, I suspect the authors are right that fair trade does more harm than good. Fair trade doesn't fully account for the economic complexity involved. It becomes yet another form of toxic charity. However, it is not clear to me that all fair trade products have the same consequences. For instance, handcrafted products sold through stores like Ten Thousand Villages are not commodities and I don't think they subject to the same type of economic realities. I haven't seen a detailed analysis by economist that would help me clarify the differences.

Once again we need to heed the admonition to act with warm hearts and cool heads. For an insightful booklet on the problems with Fair Trade Coffee see Victor Claar's Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution. I suspect that what he says about coffee applies to all agricultural commodities.

Is a rising tide of hope behind the historic shift in poverty

Christian Science Monitor: Behind the historic shift in poverty

A United Nations report on human development signals huge progress in reducing poverty. All the reasons for it may add up to a turnaround in attitudes among the poor about their future.

... For much of history, despair often bred despair among the poor. “The anticipation of future poverty will exacerbate current poverty,” says economist Esther Duflo of the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new appointee to President Obama’s Global Development Council.

In her field studies, Ms. Duflo often found the poor rejected help simply out of depression about their future. Farmers, for example, might refuse new types of fertilizer even if told it would aid their harvests.

The UN report suggests a possible end to this mental mire, with hope perhaps now breeding on hope.

“Hope operates as a capability,” says Ms. Duflo. “A little bit of hope can allow people to realize their potential.”

The UN report finds countries that emphasize investments in social policies – gender equality, health, and education – do better in the traditional measure of progress, economic growth. And the most successful developing countries have also been more open to world markets, such as welcoming foreign investment. Since 1990, the share of global trade by the so-called “global south” group of developing countries has grown from a quarter to nearly half. Big countries – China, India, Brazil – have led the way.

While these steps of progress – from free-trade pacts to water wells, from roads to new seed varieties – have helped reduce poverty, the overriding effect seems to be an improvement in the poor’s image of themselves as able to use the assets made available to them. ...

Americans' 90% tax rate

CNN: Americans' 90% tax rate

One of the challenging features of poverty aid is to avoid creating disincentives toward achieving self-sufficiency.

... Take a hypothetical single mother of two, Jane, earning $18,000 a year. Earning an additional $1 will increase Jane's actual cash available to spend by just 12 cents.

How can this be? The effect comes about because governments at various levels give aid to the very poor, such that the extremely low earners face negative tax rates. In short, we pay some poor to work -- this is the "welfare to workfare" move of Bill Clinton's legacy. But then the law takes these benefits back from the near-poor via high marginal tax rates in a "phaseout" range. The most important of these provisions is the earned income tax credit (EITC) located in the federal income tax. This provision pays the working poor up to 40 cents on the dollar up to approximately $10,000 of earnings.

If Jane makes $10,000, the government mails her a check for $4,000. Over a certain range, Jane keeps that money. But as she starts earning more than approximately $18,000, Jane begins to lose the $4,000, at a roughly 20% rate. Add that to payroll taxes (7.65%), the regular income tax (15%, at that range), and Jane is in a rate bracket over 40%, and we are just getting started -- other federal, state and local programs and taxes pile on to the same effect.

You might be thinking that losing a benefit is not a tax. That is an understandable sentiment, but Jane will not be comforted by it. Looking just at the EITC, as Jane's earnings go over $18,000, she loses some of the dollars she is earning to "regular" taxes, and the $4,000 she was getting in assistance is disappearing. It's real, green, money that she is losing. This is the net effect that Shaviro was describing: Compare Jane earning $10,000 in the workplace to Jane earning $25,000, and the latter Jane simply has over $2500 fewer dollars to spend.

If this is all so complex, how can it affect anyone's real behavior? But what we don't know, or don't fully, can affect us. ...

Tax policy is not my strong suit but articles like these explain why the seeming "irrational" or "lazy" of low-income folks is often not that irrational. It is the system they are navigating that is irrational.

The Hidden Prosperity of the Poor

New York Times: The Hidden Prosperity of the Poor - Thomas Edsall

A concept promulgated by the right — the notion of the hidden prosperity of the poor — underpins the conservative take on the ongoing debate over rising inequality.

The political right uses this concept to undermine the argument made by liberals that the increasingly unequal distribution of income poses a danger to the social fabric as well as to the American economy.

President Obama forcefully articulated the case from the left in an address on Dec. 6, 2011 at Osawatomie High School in Kansas:

This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people — we tell our kids — that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.

The conservative counterargument – that life for the poor and the middle class is better than it seems – goes like this: Even with stagnant or modestly growing incomes, the poor and middle class benefit from the fact that a stable or declining share of income is now required for basic necessities, leaving more money for discretionary spending. According to this theory, consumption inequality – the disparity between the amount of money spent on goods and services by the rich, the middle class and the poor — remains relatively unchanged, even while income inequality worsens. ...

I like this article in that I think he does a fairly good job of laying out the conservative argument and then presents his counterargument in measured tones. There is a lot to process here, and there counterarguements to Edsall's arguements, but I appreciate articles that constructively frame issues.

The new famine is a crisis of undersupply

Globe and Mail: The new famine is a crisis of undersupply

"... Is this a catastrophe of the sort that took place a generation ago, when mass famines in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s killed hundreds of thousands of people at a time? No. This time around, the cause is much simpler, and the solution much more readily at hand. We’re experiencing a basic crisis of undersupply: After three decades of worldwide food surpluses, starting in 2008, the world’s farms have not produced enough food to meet demand.

People no longer doubt, as they did 40 years ago, that the world is capable of producing enough food for all of humanity, even if our numbers grow to nine billion. We know it can, and we know how to make it happen. Farms in Africa and the Indian subcontinent – where the land is fertile and the growing season long – should be producing much more food than their European counterparts. Instead, India produces half as much per hectare, and Africa hardly anything. They could easily feed the world.

This isn’t hard to solve, and farmers know what’s needed: better transport and market infrastructure, new seeds engineered for their climates and needs, an end to subsidies and trade barriers, a shift from survival-based to commercial farming practices. And these things are being done (in part because farming is suddenly profitable), albeit too slowly. This decade may well be remembered as the unfortunate gap between the first Green Revolution (which ended mass famines and widespread Asian starvation in the 1970s) and the second (which is poised to make even bigger changes in Africa and Asia). Until supply catches up to demand, we have a crisis.

What stands in the way, this time as last time, is misunderstanding. Aid organizations in the West and governments in the developing world, motivated by myths of village tranquillity, pay people to stay rural rather than to consolidate their holdings and modernize their farming. Too many people believe, falsely, that a shift to commercial agriculture means a shift to big or exploitative farms, rather than more income for small farmers. We allow superstitions about engineered crops to become progress-blocking policies. We let meaningless middle-class fetishes for “organic” or “local” foods pollute the debate, when what’s needed is more protein, now. ..."

And to the last paragraph I say Amen!

Churches shift focus to 'Christmas stores' as a more uplifting way to give

Chicago Tribune: Churches shift focus to 'Christmas stores' as a more uplifting way to give

"... Though it's become a tradition for many households and congregations to fulfill a child's wish list for families who can't do it on their own, a growing number of ministries are replacing that charity model with what they believe can be a more uplifting approach. From Rogers Park to Garfield Park, ministries in Chicago have opened pop-up Christmas stores where families can afford to check off their child's list thanks to donated merchandise offered at drastically reduced prices, if not for free.

Though many Christians bemoan the retail industry's hold on the holidays, some ministries have found that enabling parents to put gifts under their own trees, in many cases, restores a sense of dignity that's often lost when families are in need.

"Everybody gets to work together to make something wonderful happen," Williams said as volunteers wrapped Christmas and birthday presents for her youngest daughter last weekend. "It helps me feel good about myself."

The shopping opportunity also pushes patrons to take steps toward improving their lives. At Bethel, a Lutheran ministry in Garfield Park, more than 700 families earned additional currency called Bethel Bucks by attending seminars on parenting, financial management and renters' rights. ..."

Saturday Links

(Like the Kruse Kronicle at Facebook if you want links to daily posts to appear in your Facebook feed.)

1. Several articles I saw this week are reflecting on data presented in The Pew Forum's The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Here is one interesting chart from the survey, showing what percentage of each religions's adherents live in minority religious status in their own country.

2. This is really fascinating. Smithsonian: Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” (Kentucky for Christmas!)

3. Four Harvard and MIT grads are experimenting with direct aid to the poor. "GiveDirectly, the brainchild of four Harvard and MIT graduate students, is so simple, it's genius. Give poor Kenyan families $1,000 -- and let them do whatever they want with it." Can 4 Economists Build the Most Economically Efficient Charity Ever?

4.From the Guardian, Private healthcare: the lessons from Sweden

"... Despite its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of the health service.

Their success is envied by the centre right in Britain. Despite predictions of doom, Sweden's economy continues to grow and its pro-business coalition has remained in power since 2006. The last election was the first time since the war that a centre-right government had been re-elected after serving a full term.

As the state has been shrunk, the private sector has moved in. Göran Dahlgren, a former head civil servant at the Swedish department of health and a visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, says that "almost all welfare services are now owned by private equity firms". ..."

5. Scott Annan writes in The Future Of Business Is Morality, And The Future Is Now

"... We have reached a point in our economy where it is becoming increasingly clear that businesses are being measured not just for their profit, but also for their impact. And I’m not just talking about writing a check or funding a charity; I’m referring to business models for which community involvement and inspirational brand building are the profit centers. (Think Warby Parker, TOMS, and startups such as SOMA.) I recently went to a conference where the founders of a startup posited a powerful idea: the future of marketing is philanthropy. But I think the even bigger idea is the future of business is morality. My grandfather saw this early on.

At a time when the moral framework of America appears to be fractured – or at the very least confused – businesses are in the propitious position to espouse cultural standards that can help restore values that our youth can use to build the next generation of positive enterprise. In fact, whether businesses succeed in creating and promoting positive cultures might determine whether they stay in business at all. The future of business is morality, and the future is now.

Whether it’s the job of the corporation or not to set the moral tone for society, the expectation is trending towards companies setting the right example for others to follow. With the sharp rise in entrepreneurship, young companies have the opportunity to establish strong cultures early on and share them with their communities. Money must have a moral center, and from greater consciousness in business, greater profit will follow. ..."

6. Scientific American asks, After 40 Years, Has Recycling Lived Up to Its Billing?

7. AOL has a short piece about the rise of small nuclear reactors. The Next Big Thing in Nuclear Power: Going Small

8. Scientific American has a list of The Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.

9. Depression Surpasses Asthma as Top Disability Problem among U.S. and Canadian Teens

"New data show an increasing contribution of mental and behavioral disorders to deterioration in the health-related quality of life among teens in the U.S. and Canada over the past two decades, and increases elsewhere around the globe."

10. Robotic arm controlled by the mind allows paraplegic woman to feed herself

11. Interesting piece on Why We Prefer Masculine Voices (Even in Women).

12. Atlantic Cities looks into The Mystery of Our Declining Mobility.

13. People Are Leaving California In Record Numbers

More people moved out of California in 2011 than moved in, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling that the Democrat-run state’s economic woes continue to drive residents away.

Most statisticians attribute California’s net loss of 100,000 people last year to its high cost of living, increased population density and troubling unemployment rate.

The widening middle class in Mexico is also encouraging some immigrants to remain in that country instead of moving to California.

Texas — home to lower taxes, less regulation and what the Manhattan Institute calls a “labor pool with the right skills at the right price” — is one of the most attractive destinations for companies departing from California, according to the Census Bureau. ...

14. The United States Has Seen A Huge Drop In Executions Since 2000.

"The country reported 85 executions in 2000 but only 43 in 2012, according to a new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Plus, far fewer people are being sentenced to death row in the first place. The year 2000 saw 224 new inmates sentenced to death, while 2012 saw only 78, according to the report."

15. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic had a great piece Why 'If We Can Just Save One Child ...' Is a Bad Argument, referring to a statement President Obama made at Newtown, CT. When we deal with complex topics like gun control, we are always talking about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more than 30,000 lives. The were 32,367 traffic fatalities last year. Let's set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. Nearly all those lives would be saved. Should we do this "if we can save just one more life"? I, like Friedersforf, am not advocating any particular policy. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of making statements like this, as politicians often do.

16. The New York Times has an opinion piece  by John Dickerson, The Decline of Evangelical America

"I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive. The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old evangelicalism whimper and wane."

He speaks of an Evangelical "collapse" having happened. That may be a bit premature but I think his articulation of trends is right.

17. I saw two interesting posts on the sociology Facebook this week. The New York Times had a piece about announcing bad news on Facebook: On Facebook, Bad With the Good. Mashable reports that Socioeconomic Status Predicts Number of Facebook Friends.

18. Gangnam Style hits one billion views on YouTube. K pop rules!

Alleviating World Poverty: A Progress Report

New Geography: Alleviating World Poverty: A Progress Report

There has been a substantial reduction in both the extreme poverty rate and the number of people living in extreme poverty since the early 1980s, according to information from the World Bank poverty database. The World Bank maintains data on developing world nations, which include both low income and middle income nations. The analysis below summarizes developing world (low and middle income nations) poverty trends from 1981 to the latest available year, 2008 (Table and Figure 1).

The article also includes this graph:

Go to the article for a number of interesting nuances in how poverty has changed.

Why Newly-Released Prisoners Make Great Entrepreneurs

Business Insider has an article, Why Newly-Released Prisoners Make Great Entrepreneurs.

Jeff Smith, a former Missouri State senator, spent a year in prison for conspiracy and attempt to obstruct the Federal Election Commission during his 2004 campaign.

During that year, he learned that prison is filled with men learning lessons similar to those in a first year MBA class.

Smith spoke about his experience in a TED talk in June. ...

... When you are starting a business from the ground up, you don't have many resources, and have to raise money in whatever way you can. If inmates can give haircuts with toenail clippers, as Smith describes, or make meals from stolen scraps at a warehouse, they could be the perfect people to start companies once they are freed.

The only problem, Smith explains, is the lack of training and rehabilitation the men receive while in prison. His talk ends with a call to action to train prisoners that have an innate entrepreneurial spirit.

Below I included Smith's five minute TED talk, but I wonder if Smith knows of Prison Entrepreneurship Program. The second video is Ryan Mack, author of  Living in the Village, talking about PEP.

 

Supporting Climate-Friendly Food Production

Worldwatch Blogs: Supporting Climate-Friendly Food Production

This [United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization] report, Innovations in Sustainable Agriculture: Supporting Climate-Friendly Food Production, discusses six sustainable approaches to land and water use, in both rural and urban areas, that are helping farmers and other food producers mitigate or adapt to climate change—and often both. They are:

• Building Soil Fertility: Alternatives to heavy chemical use in agriculture, such as avoiding unnecessary tilling or raising both crops and livestock on the same land, can help to drastically reduce the total amount of energy expended to produce a crop or animal, reducing overall emissions.
• Agroforestry: Because trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, keeping them on farms whenever possible can help mitigate climate change. Agroforestry also keeps the soil healthier and more resilient by maximizing the amount of organic matter, microorganisms, and moisture held within it. Agroforestry also provides shade for livestock and certain crops, and creates habitats for animals and insects, such as bees, that pollinate many crops.
• Urban Farming: Growing food in cities can mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions released from the transport, processing, and storage of food destined for urban populations. Urban agriculture also increases the total area of non-paved land in cities, making urban landscapes more resilient to flooding and other weather shocks, while improving the aesthetic value of these landscapes.
• Cover Cropping/Green Manure: Cover cropping, also known as green manure, is the practice of strategically planting crops that will deliver a range of benefits to a farming system, and often plowing these crops into the soil instead of harvesting their organic matter. Planting cover crops improves soil fertility and moisture by making soil less vulnerable to drought or heat waves. Cover crops also serve as a critical deterrent against pests and diseases that affect crops or livestock, such as corn root worm or Rift Valley fever, particularly as warmer temperatures enable these organisms to survive in environments that were previously too cold for them.
• Improving Water Conservation and Recycling: Innovations in water conservation, including recycling wastewater in cities, using precise watering techniques such as drip irrigation rather than sprinklers, and catching and storing rainwater, all help to reduce the global strain on already-scarce water resources.
• Preserving Biodiversity and Indigenous Breeds: Growing diverse and locally adapted indigenous crops, such as yams, quinoa, and cassava, can provide a source of income and improve farmers’ chances of withstanding the effects of climate change, such as heat stress, drought, and the expansion of disease and pest populations. Preserving plant and animal biodiversity also reduces farmers’ overreliance on a small number of commodity crops that make them vulnerable to shifts in global markets.

By tapping into the multitude of climate-friendly farming practices that already exist, agriculture can continue to provide food for the world’s population, as well as be a source of livelihood for the 1.3 billion people who rely on farming for income and sustenance. If agriculture is to play a positive role in the global fight against climate change, however, agricultural practices that mitigate or adapt to climate change will need to receive increased research, attention, and investment in the coming years.

Bono: Africa Needs Capitalism

The Benefits and Perils of the Minimum Wage

Economist: The argument in the floor

Evidence is mounting that moderate minimum wages can do more good than harm

... America’s academics still do not agree on the employment effects. But both sides have honed their methods and, in some ways, the gap between them has shrunk. Messrs Card and Krueger moved on to other work, but Arindrajit Dube at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Michael Reich of the University of California at Berkeley have generalised the case-study approach, comparing restaurant employment across all contiguous counties with different minimum-wage levels between 1990 and 2006. They found no adverse effects on employment from a higher minimum wage. They also argue that if research showed such effects, these mostly reflected other differences between American states and had nothing to do with the minimum wage.

Messrs Neumark and Wascher still demur. They have published stacks of studies (and a book) purporting to show that minimum wages hit jobs. In a forthcoming paper they defend their methods and argue that the evidence still favours their view. But even they are no longer blanket opponents. In a 2011 paper they pointed out that a higher minimum wage along with the Earned Income Tax Credit (which tops up income for poor workers in America) boosted both employment and earnings for single women with children (though it cost less-skilled, minority men jobs).

Britain’s experience offers another set of insights. The country’s national minimum wage was introduced at 46% of the median wage, slightly higher than America’s. A lower floor applied to young people. Both are adjusted annually on the advice of the Low Pay Commission. Before the law took effect, worries about potential damage to employment were widespread. Yet today the consensus is that Britain’s minimum wage has done little or no harm.

The most striking impact of Britain’s minimum wage has been on the spread of wages. Not only has it pushed up pay for the bottom 5% of workers, but it also seems to have boosted earnings further up the income scale—and thus reduced wage inequality. Wage gaps in the bottom half of Britain’s pay scale have shrunk sharply since the late 1990s. A new study by a trio of British labour-market economists (including one at the Low Pay Commission) attributes much of that contraction to the minimum wage. Wage inequality fell more for women (a higher proportion of whom are on the minimum wage) than for men and the effect was most pronounced in low-wage parts of Britain.

This new evidence leaves economists with lots of unanswered questions. What exactly is going on in labour markets if minimum wages do not hurt employment but reduce wage gaps? Are firms cutting costs by squeezing wages elsewhere? Are they improving the productivity of the lowest-wage workers? Some of the newest studies suggest firms employ a variety of strategies to deal with a higher minimum wage, from modestly raising prices to saving money from lower turnover. ...

Attention Scarcity, Ego Depletion and Poverty

Marginal Revolution: Attention Scarcity, Ego Depletion and Poverty

Poor people often do things that are against their long-term interests such as playing the lottery, borrowing too much and saving too little. Shah, Mullainathan and Sahfir have a new theory to explain some of these puzzles. SMS argue that immediate problems draw people’s attention and as people use cognitive resources to solve these problems they have fewer resources left over to solve or even notice other problems. In essence, it’s easier for the rich than the poor to follow the Eisenhower rule–”Don’t let the urgent overcome the important”–because the poor face many more urgent tasks. My car needed a brake job the other day – despite this being a relatively large expense I was able to cover it without a second’s thought. Compared to a poorer person I benefited from my wealth twice, once by being able to cover the expense and again by not having to devote cognitive resources to solving the problem.

SMS test the theory with small experiments in which people are asked to play simple games. Poverty is simulated by giving some players fewer game resources. Players in the “poverty” conditions are then shown to devote more attention to the current round and less attention to future rounds, including borrowing more from future rounds. ...

Bloodletting Economics

Robet Lupton is the author of some excellent books like Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor and Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It).  Each month he does a newsletter for FCS Ministries in Atlanta.  This month was particularly interesting piece. I've got a few comments at the end.

Blood-letting

November 2012

by Bob Lupton

Ever wonder why the red and white striped pole is displayed outside many barbershops?  Neither have I.  Not until I stumbled across a morsel of obscure history about this symbol.  I was immediately drawn in.

In the middle ages surgeons and barbers performed most of the operations.  Yes, that’s right – barbers.  Blood-letting was the most commonly prescribed treatment of the day, a cure for almost every ailment.  Surgeons would order it, barbers would do the cutting.  The red-and-white-striped pole outside the barbershop was the signpost that blood-letting was performed here.  The red represents the blood being drawn, the white represents the tourniquet used, and the pole itself represents the stick squeezed in the patient’s hand to dilate the veins.   Interesting, eh?

What I found even more interesting, however, was that for more than 3000 years, from antiquity until the advent of modern scientific medicine, blood-letting was universally accepted as the most effective remedy for almost every disease.  It was recommended for the treatment of countless ailments ranging from cholera to cancer, tetanus to tuberculosis, gout to gangrene.  It was even prescribed to treat acne and hemorrhoids.  Before the circulatory system was understood, a prevailing theory was that blood could stagnate in the extremities.  A build-up of bad blood could cause all manner of maladies.  The cure was purging.

Every one bought in.  For eons.  Even in ancient cultures like the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. The Talmud (ancient Israel’s sacred writings) specified certain days for blood-letting.  Hippocrates (the father of modern medicine) accepted the practice as good medicine some 500 years before the birth of Christ.  So did Socrates and Plato.  Early Christian writings offer advice on which saints’ days were favorable for blood-letting.  Well into the scientific era the practice continued to prevail.  The more blood drawn the better, even to the point of losing consciousness.  Many sessions would only end when the patient began to swoon.   1799 George Washington, suffering from a throat infection, requested that he be bled heavily (nearly four pints) and died shortly thereafter.

One typical course of medical treatment began the morning of 13 July 1824. A French sergeant was stabbed through the chest while engaged in single combat; within minutes, he fainted from loss of blood. Arriving at the local hospital he was immediately bled twenty ounces “to prevent inflammation”. During the night he was bled another 24 ounces. Early the next morning, the chief surgeon bled the patient another 10 ounces (285 ml); during the next 14 hours, he was bled five more times. Medical attendants thus intentionally removed more than half of the patient’s normal blood supply—in addition to the initial blood loss which caused the sergeant to faint. Bleedings continued over the next several days. By 29 July, the wound had become inflamed. The physician applied 32 leeches to the most sensitive part of the wound. Over the next three days, there were more bleedings and a total of 40 more leeches. The sergeant recovered and was discharged on 3 October. His physician wrote that “by the large quantity of blood lost, amounting to 170 ounces [nearly eleven pints], besides that drawn by the application of leeches [perhaps another two pints], the life of the patient was preserved”. 

“The life of the patient was preserved” by draining thirteen pints of his blood?!  Outrageous!  Sounds totally absurd today.  But is it any more absurd than the widely accepted practice of draining off the strength of able-bodied adults by “curing” them with dependency-producing subsidies?  Can we legitimately claim to be “preserving the life” of the needy by weakening their capacity to become self-sufficient?   And how absurd is it to measure the effectiveness of our remedy by the volume of recipients who return for repeated “treatments”?

Is harmful medical treatment better than no treatment at all?  The French sergeant who survived the blood-letting would doubtless answer “yes”.  His surgeon acted upon the best knowledge that was available at the time.  Is harmful charity better than no charity at all?  Recipients would doubtless urge its continuation.  But just as it took centuries of malpractice before the medical profession finally realized that blood-adding, not blood-letting, actually saves lives, so charitable malpractice may have to run its course.

Bloodletting persisted into the 20th century.  Not until Pasteur (1822-1895) figured out that germs, not bad blood, cause diseases did the practice begin to fall out of favor.  It took many more decades before the practice was finally abandoned.  The modern science of microbiology finally brought a 3000 year practice to an end.  I can’t help wondering how long it will take the tradition-steeped compassion industry to recognize the need for a fundamental change of practice.

I've actually incorporated the bloodletting metaphor in some writing I've been doing on economic issues. (Stay tuned.) For millennia, bloodletting was the preferred method for treating illness. Only in the past century or two have we learned enough about the human body to see that this is not effective, even destructive. For millennia, the preferred method for treating poverty was generosity. Poverty was an inadequate distribution of a fixed amount of wealth. Only in the past century or two have we really unlocked the powers of productivity and exchange. Poverty is now more appropriately seen as exclusion from networks of productivity and exchange.

No metaphor is perfect. Generosity had limited effectiveness over the millennia and generosity still has a critical role to play today, particularly in times crisis. But the revolution in productivity and exchange has radically altered how we address challenges we face.

All my life I've heard that the Bible talks about wealth and poverty more than any other topic, yet I find very few theologians who have ever taken even one class in economics. I can probably count on one hand the number who have had formal training in economics. The irony is that it is often those who most contextualized the Bible on a range of issues ranging from science, to gender roles, to slavery, to war, and to government, who I find become the most wooden and "fundamentalist" on economic questions ... unable (unwilling?) to make a leap from the advanced agrarian societies of the Bible era to modern economies, sometimes even pining for retreat from the dark dystopian present back to the bucolic bliss of the past. (And just to be fair, those that are most "fundamentalist" on so many other issues want to baptize our present economic order as the "biblical" model.) We aren’t going back, and idealistic models like distributism and liberationism, or any other model that doesn’t seriously take into account issues of productivity and exchange, offer no guidance for the future.

There are many challenges confronting the church of Jesus Christ but I continue to be convinced that it is the church's inability to come to grips with modern economic order, and by extension the inability to help people find meaning in the our present context and equip them for ministry in our present context, that is at the top of the list of challenges.

Latin America's income inequality falling, says World Bank

Guardian: Latin America's income inequality falling, says World Bank

Region now has as many middle class people as those who are poor thanks to rapid growth in incomes, study reveals.

Income inequality is falling in Latin America even as it rises elsewhere in the world, according to a World Bank study that encourages government intervention to reduce the wealth gap.

Over the past 15 years, more than 50 million people have risen into the middle class, which is now – for the first time – about the same size as the population of poor in the region, says the report, which was unveiled on Tuesday. ...

... He said the main reason for the reduction in inequality is not a compression of income from the rich at the top, but because of a rapid growth in the incomes and spending power of those at the "bottom of the population pyramid".

About 30% of the region's population is now in the middle class, which the World Bank defines as those who have less than a 10% chance of falling back into poverty. This is similar to the proportion who are classified as poor. In between is the biggest group, the 38% who are considered "vulnerable" because they live just above the poverty line on an income of between $4 and $10 a day. ...

... The report, titled Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class, recommends improvements in public education and healthcare as a way of consolidating the upward mobility of the population. Currently, one of the biggest gaps is not in spending power, but in access to decent social services. In many countries, poorer families have no choice but to put their children in low-standard schools and their sick in poorly-funded hospitals, while the middle class spend substantial sums on private education and health care.

The World Bank's president, Jim Yong Kim, emphasised the role played by the private sector, which he said creates 90 percent of jobs in developing countries.

But he said the great strength of the story in Latin America was that countries that have self-consciously focussed on reducing inequality have also experienced rapid economic growth. ...

How Facebook and Twitter Are Making Developing World Cities Better

Atlantic Cities: How Facebook and Twitter Are Making Developing World Cities Better

... In Latin America, Mexico City is not unique. Use of social media is growing at a breathtaking pace across the region. When Facebook passed the 1 billion user mark in October, few people noticed that 19 percent of those users live in Latin America (which only accounts for 8 percent of the world's population). The governments of virtually all large Latin American cities now use social media to engage with citizens, and smaller cities are quickly following suit. The Inter-American Development Bank recently found that social media is used by governments in 70 percent of the region´s 140 "emerging cities" (those having 100,000 to 2 million residents and above-average economic growth rates).

Although the press has focused on Latin American presidents who have embraced social media as a potent new channel for old-fashioned political communications, something very different is happening at the municipal level.

Mayors seem to be betting that by micromanaging urban issues via Twitter or Facebook, they will give voters concrete evidence of their effectiveness in office. This is a risky tactic, of course. Many local governments that find it easy to virtually "engage" with constituents may not have the budgets, the organization, or the staff to actually solve the problems that generate complaints. The result, in that case, could be a voter backlash amplified, ironically, over the same social media channels. ...

... Over the coming decade, hundreds of millions of city dwellers in emerging economies such as Mexico, Brazil, India and China are likely to rise from poverty. Much has been written about how their increasing expectations will pressure governments like never before to deliver tangible improvements that make urban life safer, healthier, and more egalitarian.

I predict that social media will have a highly disruptive but largely positive effect in this context. At a minimum, these technologies will give new vitality to the ancient ideals of participation and accountability. At best, they might shorten the wait for new lights in a darkened park. In either event, the next mayor of Mexico City, like others across the developing world, will not really have the option of ignoring social media. That's where people are choosing to speak, and where they expect to be heard.

Find balance between subsidiarity, solidarity

LaCrosse Tribune: David Olsen: Find balance between subsidiarity, solidarity

... The principle of solidarity is a sense of the common good, of the natural and supernatural connections that bind us one to another, and of our responsibility toward one another.

In individual cases, the application of the principle is a reminder of the clear moral imperative that the wealthy exercise their sacred obligation to aid the less advantaged and to work toward the betterment of everyone. ...

... This principle of solidarity in relationship to government action means that state government — and many times the federal government — are appropriate vehicles to direct the use of wealth collected through taxes or otherwise for the common good. We see this in such things as unemployment insurance and in Social Security. ...

... Subsidiarity is the principle that says that in matters economic and political, the preference is always to be given to the most local level of authority that can handle the matter. We don’t appeal lemonade stand issues to state regulatory authority; at least I hope not. So, too, with questions such as traffic, employment issues and health concerns solutions should be found at the most local level possible.

This principal does not negate the idea that sometimes the federal government must be involved, but the preference is clearly for solutions to be found at the local level if possible. ...

... Catholic social teaching emphasizes the application of both the principle of subsidiarity and the principle of solidarity. The two are not meant to be mixed and balanced; instead one principle acts as a check on the other principle.

There is no Christian doctrine that clearly defines when and how the two principles are to be applied, when one is meant to be used to check the other. Instead, the application of the two principles — subsidiarity and solidarity — where one principle limits the over-application of the other principle, is an exercise of prudent judgment.

A pretty good summary. What more would you add or what would you qualify? Did you see my post from earlier today? Moderation Polerization Through Polarity Management. Do solidarity and subsidiarity form a polarity?

Kenya’s mobile telephones: Vital for the poor

Economist: Kenya’s mobile telephones: Vital for the poor

AFRICA’S “mobile decade”, when telephones at last reached most corners of the continent, has meant a huge improvement in the lives of the poor. But quantifying it is hard. How useful can a mobile phone be to someone living on less than $2.50 a day, the World Bank’s standard benchmark of poverty? Researchers in Kenya have given a partial answer. They find that people will skip a meal or choose to walk instead of paying for a bus fare so that they can keep their phone in credit. ...

... Still, only 16% of respondents said they were using their phones to browse the internet. The real breakthrough in the Kenyan market has been in people’s ability to send and receive money, with more than two-thirds doing so by phone. East Africa’s biggest success has been M-Pesa, a mobile-based money-transfer system pioneered by Safaricom, a leading Kenyan operator. Its simple interface, which works on any phone, has brought financial services to Kenya’s poor majority, enabling the movement of some $8.6 billion in the first half of this year. ...

There has been a big interest in microfinance in recent years. The aim of many organizations was to make loans available to the poor so they could start businesses and foster economic growth. But Daryl Collins, et al., in Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day, show that business formation is not the highest priority for the poor. They had hundreds of poor families in India, Bangledesh, and South Africa fill out diaries recording their financial transactions for one year. What they learned is that the biggest financial challenge the poor have is cash flow management. Money does not come in in a steady stream across the year. Yet if you save up money is very difficult to keep it safe. Having the money readily at hand also makes it harder not to spend. Banking by phone is proving to be a major impact on financial management for the poor. With increased ability to manage finances will also come a greater capacity for entrepreneurial activity.

Saturday Links

Here are this week's odds and ends that didn't make it on to the blog. Enjoy the leftovers!

1. MIT Technology Review says Geoengineering Could Be Essential to Reducing the Risk of Climate Change. "Using technology to cool the planet may be the only way to deal with the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, argues scientist David Keith." On a similar topic is this piece by Robert Kurlwich at NPR, Will We 'Fix' The Weather? Yes. Should We Fix The Weather? Hmmm. Kurlwich discusses the possibility that we may one day be able to control the earth's climate and wonders if that is a good thing.

2. Research indicates that Millennial Generation Becoming More Fiscally Conservative.

3. Are E-readers a transitional technology? Analysis: E-readers grapple with a future on the shelf.

4. Inhabitat reports on The World's First Commercial Vertical Farm Opens in Singapore. "The dense metropolis of Singapore is now home to the world’s first commercial vertical farm! Built by Sky Greens Farms, the rising steel structure will help the city grow more food locally, reducing dependence on imported produce. The new farm is able to produce 1 ton of fresh veggies every other day, which are sold in local supermarkets."

5. The New Republic has a very lengthy article The Mormon Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It offers some interesting insights in to Mormonism's road from communalism to economic individualism, a trajectory followed by many Protestant sectarian movements. Jackson Lears writes:

"Mormons embraced economic individualism and hierarchical communalism; they distrusted government interventions in business life but not in moral life; they used their personal morality to underwrite their monetary success. They celebrated endless progress through Promethean striving. They paid little attention to introspection and much to correct behavior. And their fundamental scripture confirmed that America was God’s New Israel and the Mormons His Chosen People. It would be hard to find an outlook more suited to the political culture of the post–Reagan Republican Party."

6. Annie-Marie Slaughter maintains that the "having it all" debate about work-life balance isn't just about women. Work-Life Balance as a Men's Issue, Too.

"A number of students asked foreign policy questions, and then a young woman asked me about the responses I have received to my Atlantic cover story from this past summer, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." I answered, and several other young women followed up. After ten minutes or so, I saw that the roughly 50 percent guys in the room had gone completely silent. When I commented on the suddenly one-sided nature of the conversation, one young man volunteered that he "had been raised in a strong feminist household" and considered himself to be fully supportive of male-female equality, but he was reluctant to say anything for fear he would be misunderstood. A number of the other guys around the table nodded in agreement."

7. French and Spanish legal documents from colonial Louisiana are being digitized, opening up a new window on colonial history in that part of the world. Colonial La. records shed new light on US history

8. People who know me personally know I tend to use sarcasm and double entendre in spoken communication. One of my biggest blogging challenges is editing most of this out of posts. Emoticons can help but some of the biggest misunderstandings I have had came from people not being able to see my wink or big grin as I write certain things. For that reason, I found this interesting: The Strange Science Of Translating Sarcasm Online

9. Ever wonder why sign language often seems so animated? Why Great Sign Language Interpreters Are So Animated

10. Africa: sociologists cite religion as a key factor in preventing and alleviating AIDS epidemic

"In their new book "Religion and AIDS in Africa" (Oxford University Press), sociologists Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb seek to challenge the widespread view that religious beliefs and communities have unwittingly assisted in the spread of the disease through their resistance to preventative sex education. They also show that not only have religious groups had a largely positive role in AIDS prevention, but also how the epidemic has shaped religious beliefs in unexpected ways."

Prosperity Isn't Just a Matter of Wealth

Foreign Policy: Prosperity Isn't Just a Matter of Wealth

Man does not live by GDP alone. An introduction to the Legatum Institute's latest Prosperity Index.

It doesn't take a degree from Oxford to understand that a nation's average income -- even after adjustments for purchasing power, to make international comparisons more relevant -- is an inadequate measure of comparative well-being. That reality has inspired numerous attempts to create a better measure. The latest, most comprehensive, and arguably most insightful, is the Legatum Institute's Prosperity Index for 2012, released just this week. I can't claim utter objectivity here: I've been a consultant to the Legatum Institute. I suspect, though, that you won't need much convincing to be captured by this ambitious effort.

Back to that pesky measurement problem. For decades, the United Nations has been brewing a straightforward improvement on income rankings on a regular basis, work largely inspired by the passions of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. The UN's Human Development Index blends per capita income, years of schooling, and life expectancy. And in the past few years, it's added an "inequality adjusted" version that discounts each component according to how equally it is distributed in the population before combining them in index form.

Obviously, though, other elements matter to well-being -- among them human rights, economic freedom, socioeconomic mobility, personal security, social insurance, and social cohesion. Other indexes try to capture one or more of these attributes. Thus the Heritage/WSJ Index of Economic Freedom ranks countries according to ten criteria ranging from property rights to entrepreneurship. The World Economic Forum measures national competitiveness, writ large. The Life Satisfaction Index simply cuts to the chase, ranking countries according to surveys of self-reported happiness.

The Legatum Institute's approach is truly catholic (with a small c). First, countries are rated according to eight sub-indexes (economy, entrepreneurship/opportunity, governance, education, health, safety/security, personal freedom, and social capital), which are derived from 89 variables. Some are objective (e.g. the unemployment rate) and some subjective (the percentage who answered "yes" to the question: "Did you worry yesterday?") The raw data, by the way, can be accessed on the website.

Scores on each of the eight sub-indexes are given equal weight in producing the aggregate rankings. ...

Some very interesting data. Check it out at www.prosperity.com.

UW students' 3-D printer to turn trash into better lives in Third World

Seattle Times: UW students' 3-D printer to turn trash into better lives in Third World

A team of University of Washington students has developed a machine that can "print" large plastic objects out of garbage.

When he was working for the Peace Corps in Ghana and Panama, Matthew Rogge started to dream of turning waste plastic, abundant and freely available, into useful objects that would solve vexing Third World engineering problems.

Sound far-fetched?

He and a team of University of Washington students have done it.

Last week, Rogge — who went back to school to become a mechanical engineer precisely to learn how to do this — and two fellow student engineers won an international competition for their proposal to turn plastic garbage into composting toilets.

They've developed an inexpensive 3-D printer that can turn shredded, melted plastic waste into just about anything.

3-D printers have been around for at least 25 years, although they have become more widely available, better-known and cheaper in recent years. They use computer-aided design to create three-dimensional objects by laying down super-thin layers of a material, such as plastic, much like a regular printer lays down ink.

But until now, nobody had figured out how to cheaply build a large-scale printer that used recycled plastic as its raw material, said UW mechanical-engineering professor Mark Ganter. ...

New test to improve HIV diagnosis in poor countries

Reuters: New test to improve HIV diagnosis in poor countries

(Reuters) - Scientists have come up with a test for the virus that causes AIDS that is ten times more sensitive and a fraction of the cost of existing methods, offering the promise of better diagnosis and treatment in the developing world.

The test uses nanotechnology to give a result that can be seen with the naked eye by turning a sample red or blue, according to research from scientists at Imperial College in London published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"Our approach affords for improved sensitivity, does not require sophisticated instrumentation and it is ten times cheaper," Molly Stevens, who led the research, told Reuters. ...

... The test could also be reconfigured to detect other diseases, such as sepsis, Leishmaniasis, Tuberculosis and malaria, Stevens said.

Testing is not only crucial in picking up the HIV virus early but also for monitoring the effectiveness of treatments. ...

The new sensor works by testing serum, a clear watery fluid derived from blood samples, in a disposable container for the presence of an HIV biomarker called p24.

If p24 is present, even in minute concentrations, it causes the tiny gold nanoparticles to clump together in an irregular pattern that turns the solution blue. A negative result separates them into ball shapes that generate a red color. ...

Incubating women's businesses in the Palestinian territories

Christian Science Monitor: Incubating women's businesses in the Palestinian territories

Tomorrow’s Youth Organization based in Nablus, on the West Bank, helps promising new women's businesses survive.

... TYO’s Women’s Incubation Services for Entrepreneurs (WISE) brought back six businesses that had developed a foundation from their initial women’s entrepreneurship program—Fostering Women Entrepreneurs in Nablus, and recruited nine additional female entrepreneurs by running advertisements in local newspapers, radio, and on Facebook. The requirements were simple—businesses had to have a foundation or business plan already completed, and had to be based in the northern West Bank.

Candidates who responded to ads underwent two rounds of interviews, designed not only to determine the entrepreneur's eligibility for the program, but also to assess her strengths and needs moving forward. Partnering with the Small Enterprise Center, TYO sent their final 15 candidates to one-on-one coaching early in the process in order to set their women up for targeted support and success. Additionally, the year-long incubation project will provide marketing, access to capital, and financial-growth trainings, as well as business English and social-media training facilitated by last year’s Palestinian TechWomen delegation.

When planning for an incubation center, TYO kept in mind that the conservative culture in Palestine often limits businesswomen’s opportunities to participate in meetings, classes, conferences, and other development programs. Furthermore, the psychosocial environment at times leaves women discouraged when they do not see immediate growth or results in their efforts to propel their businesses forward.

By planning programming in the mornings and weekends, TYO is able to work around many of the restrictions on women’s mobility. Not only that, but establishing the TYO center in Nablus as the base for WISE, they are able to fill a gap by being the only business incubation center in the northern West Bank geared to women, and provide support to women who may not be able to travel all the way to Ramallah, where such programs are more common. By serving as a support system to the businesswomen, Samin and Inas Badawi—a local Palestinian—provide examples of female-to-female support that is uncommon in Palestine, and try to foster the same sense of encouragement between the women they work with.

It is this model of American-Palestinian cooperation that sets TYO’s WISE program apart from other entrepreneurship trainings in Palestine. ...

Bono, Capitalism, and Foreign Aid

Forbes had an interesting article last week about Bono, Bono's 'Humbling' Realizations About Aid, Capitalism And Nerds.

Bono has learned much about music over more than three decades with U2. But alongside that has been a lifelong lesson in campaigning — the activist for poverty reduction in Africa spoke frankly on Friday about how his views about philanthropy had now stretched to include an appreciation for capitalism.

The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been “a humbling thing for me” to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who “got into this as a righteous anger activist with all the cliches.”

“Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge,” he told an audience of 200 leading technology entrepreneurs and investors at the F.ounders tech conference in Dublin. “We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce.” ...

Poverty is not first and foremost an absence wealth. Poverty is exclusion from networks of productivity and exchange. Inclusion into those networks is the solution.

Economic development has three stages, much like triage. Stage 1 is relief. The bleeding has to be stopped and the patient has to be stabilized. Stage 2 is rehabilitation. Wounds need to be healed and the person needs to be nurtured to health. Stage 3 is development. Assisting a relatively healthy patient toward greater health and flourishing.

In the face of a natural disaster like a tsunami or a hurricane, we must do relief. Water, food, clothing, shelter, and medical care are paramount. Once the situation is stabilized comes a time of rebuilding basic infrastructure. But if we want to help beyond relief and rehabilitation, the focus must be upon expanding inclusion in networks of productivity and exchange. All three stages are necessary but all three have a different focus. 

The propensity of Western advocates for the poor is to see most instances of poverty as problems needing relief, with maybe some cases needing rehabilitation. Economic development isn't even on the radar. (And in fact, words like "markets" and "development" are voiced with derision in some quarters.) But at any given moment, very few poor nations are in need of significant relief, some could use rehabilitative work, and most need economic development. We treat countries needing economic development as victims needing relief. The consequences can be devastating.

Here is a graph from the Hope International website. (It comes from Bill Easterly's The White Man's Burden, page 47. I have unsuccessfully looked for an updated chart with this data.)

When aid grows to be about 7% of nation's economy a transformation begins to take place. National leaders turn their attention away from their domestic business sector. They feel less and less accountabile to making their domestic economy work or to being responsive to their constituents. Their energies turn toward the aid giver. The mission becomes retention and expansion of aid.

Yet Western advocates talk in terms of the West has X% of the world's wealth while sub-Saharan African countries have only Y%. Solution? Give wealth to equalize the difference and "relieve" the poverty. As Bono has learned, this "relief" orientation is not only not the answer, it is a contributor to sustained impoverishment. Development and expansion of networks of productivity and exchange are the answer.

Saturday Links

Each week I spend considerable time scanning headlines as I look for stories to blog about at the Kruse Kronicle. I clip them into an Evernote Notebook and usually twice a day I select one or two to link and discuss. A number of interesting stories never make it on to the blog.

So this week I'm beginning what I hope will be a regular Saturday feature. Each Saturday I will post links I did not use the previous week. For now I will call it "Saturday Links." Happy clicking!

1. Interesting video intro to Gen IV Nuclear Power at the Catalyst: Next Generation Nuclear Power

2. BBC L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter. Scientists found guilty for bad prediction about an earthquake. That will put a chill in the scientific community.

3. Icon of the American Libertarian movement, Murray Rothbard, once asked, "Why won't the left acknowledge the difference between deserving poor and undeserving poor. Why support the feckless, lazy & irresponsible?" Chris Dillow gives a libertarian response affirming the need to Support the undeserving poor.

4. I love historical restoration. The Atlantic has a great piece, Scientists Recover the Sounds of 19th-Century Music and Laughter From the Oldest Playable American Recording, about how scientists have restored a phonograph recording made in 1878 in St. Louis.

5. Chronicle of Philanthropy says Most Donors Plan to Give as Much or More in 2012, Survey Finds.

6. How did those Easter Island statues get into place? California State University archaeologists think they have the answer. See Easter Island Statues Could Have ‘Walked’ Into Positions in Wired. Here is the YouTube clip:

So where did they get the rope?

7. Think you "bought" a book for your Kindle? Gizmodo says think again: You Don’t Own the Books on Your Kindle.

8. BBC has a report on the stuff people are printing with 3D printers: Bras and guitars: What people today are 3D printing.

But then there is also The Dark Side of 3D Printing.

9. Bryan Caplan explains that the rate of executions per capita in the U. S. has been in monotonic decline over the nation's history: U.S. Executions Per Capita Have Been Falling for 400 Years.

He writes:

"I can easily imagine my graph in a Julian Simon or Steven Pinker chapter on human progress and the decline in violence.  Even though I have no philosophical objection to the death penalty, it's hard not to interpret this 400-year pattern as a strong sign of human betterment."

10. Mark Roberts has a great piece about cross-generational misunderstandings using social media: Living in the Brave New World of Social Media: Posting a Death on Facebook

11. American Association of University Women (AAUW) says pay inequity begins right out of college: Does gender pay gap exist? Right out of college, says new study. But Elizabeth Dwoskin says "not so fast" on attributing this all to discrimination: Why Women Earn Less Than Men a Year Out of School.

12. Wildcat football rising! Kansas State moves up to No. 3  EMAW!

13. Sporting KC finishes first place in East with 2-1 win over Philadelphia Union. Awesome!

Consumption Inequality Versus Income Inequality

Income inequality is a big topic these days, but there are some who argue that income inequality data doesn't tell the whole picture. Income data typically uses pre-tax and pre-transfer income (meaning people at the top have less than it appears because of the taxes they pay, and the people at the bottom have more because of assistance they recieve.) There are other factors that muddy the waters as well.

The American Enterprise Institute released a study last summer that focuses on consumption differences. Yes, I know many of my readers will roll their eyes at AEI. I'll say that I've seen similar arguements made in peer-reviewd articles. Here is a piece in the New York Times four years ago written by two Fed Reserve folks making similar arguements, You Are What You Spend. The AEI report is A new measure of consumption inequality. Below is the executive summary, which can be found at the AEI website.

Does seeing inequality in terms of consumption clarify anything? What are the advantages or disadvantages of looking at things this way?

Executive Summary

In recent times, the debate surrounding middle-class welfare has tended to focus on the issue of income inequality. In a popular 2006 paper, economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez use tax return data from the Internal Revenue Service to suggest that income inequality has widened significantly over the period 1913 to 2010.[1] Another frequently cited statistic is that in 2010, approximately half of all reported income went to the top 10 percent of earners.

We argue in this paper that income data are not the best measure of overall welfare. What matters for household well-being is consumption, since households are better able to smooth consumption rather than income over their lifetime. To that end, we use two alternative sources of data to assess changes in consumption inequality.Our first source, the Consumer Expenditure (CEX) Survey, shows aggregated changes in consumption expenditures for households at all levels of the income distribution. Using these data, we find that consumption inequality has increased only marginally since the 1980s. Further, consumption inequality narrows in periods of recessions, such as during the 2007–2009 recession. We also construct Gini coefficients from the CEX data and find that they have remained relatively stable over time, suggesting that the inequality has not widened significantly.

The second data source we use is the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), which allows us to assess consumption inequality in durable goods. Consumption of durable goods is recorded less well in the CEX data but is important in thoroughly assessing consumption inequality. The RECS survey includes questions on household use of appliances such as microwaves, dishwashers, computers, and printers. Simple tabulations of these data across years suggest that a higher percentage of low-income households is able to afford and possess these items. In addition, the quality of dwelling spaces has improved and more low-income households have heating and air conditioning today than at any time in the past.

To see if these differences are statistically significant, we present regression tables showing the likelihood that a household owns any of these items. The results suggest a significant narrowing of the gap between low-income and other households in certain durable-goods items, such as color televisions, microwaves, refrigerators, and air conditioners. In other items, like computers and printers, the gap was small to begin with but widened as usage of these items became more widespread and cost of these items declined. However, in recent times, even this gap has narrowed. For a third category of items, including clothes washers, clothes dryers, and dishwashers, the gap has tended to be fairly stable over time. Even in a statistical sense, there is a trend toward narrowing the consumption gap between low-income and other households.

Note

1. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective,” AEA Papers and Proceedings: Measuring and Interpreting Trends in Economic Inequality 96, no. 2 (May 2006): 200–205, http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezAEAPP06.pdf (accessed June 6, 2012). For updated data, see Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States” (working paper, University of California–Berkeley, March 2, 2012), http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf (accessed June 6, 2012).

Inequality: Income vs. consumption from AEI

New Rice for Africa: Shades of Both a Green Revolution and Food Sovereignty

Worldwatch: New Rice for Africa: Shades of Both a Green Revolution and Food Sovereignty

The New Rice for Africa variety has become part of the debate over whether a Green Revolution is the best approach to ensure food security in Africa. ...

JAMBUR, The Gambia—The dissemination of the high-yielding New Rice for Africa (NERICA) seeds has sparked contention that is a microcosm for a central debate in global agricultural development: does Africa need its own Green Revolution, an effort that 50 years ago saw dramatic productivity increases through the use of new crop technologies in Asia and Latin America?

NERICA, developed by 2004 World Food Prize winner Dr. Monty Jones, is being promoted by the Africa Rice Center mainly in West African countries where rice is a staple food. It is a cross between an Asian variety, responsible for the high yield, and an African variety, which ensures its local adaptability.

West African governments have touted NERICA as a hallmark of a new Green Revolution and as a path to boosting rice self-sufficiency, especially after the 2008 food price spike exposed the dangers of import dependence. On the other side, advocates of “food sovereignty”—centered on farmers’ control over food systems—have voiced strong opposition. The advocacy organization GRAIN has labeled NERICA a “trap for small farmers” who will become vulnerable to expensive chemical fertilizers and seeds, a situation widely cited by critics of the 1960s Green Revolution.

What I’ve found in Jambur, which in 2002 became the first Gambian village to access the new crop, is a much more nuanced picture, one that in fact incorporates elements of each side of the debate. This suggests what a tactical misstep it would be for food sovereignty loyalists to completely remove themselves from engaging with a new variety just because it has become embedded in the discourse of a new Green Revolution. ...

 

Reverse brain drain: Economic shifts lure migrants home

Christian Science Monitor: Reverse brain drain: Economic shifts lure migrants home

The tide of brain drain – from developing countries to industrialized nations – has turned. Human capital is returning home to Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa, while some European professionals squeezed by the recession, turn toward developing countries for advancement.

"Brain drain" – the flow of intellect and skilled labor from poor to rich countries – has been so constant in modern times that the Nigerian cabdriver who was educated as a doctor back home is just as much a fixture of New York City's landscape as a fledgling Broadway actress or Wall Street banker.

Academics and college-educated engineers from Brazil to China to Poland have long set off for the world's more developed nations for better opportunities, sometimes in their own fields, often behind steering wheels or in fast-food or restaurant kitchens.

But now that tide is turning; immigrants no longer always see developed countries as a better place to be. ...

... Emerging economies not only are faring better than most of the developed world in the current recession, they also continue to grow, drawing back their expatriates and, in some cases, even luring new high-skilled citizens of the US and Europe.

It is the "democratization of talent," says Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "Everyone went to four or five English-speaking countries before, [and all other nations] got the third-rung talent. Today, knowledge is no longer monopolized anywhere." ...

... Benefits are not just measured in the individuals' skills or number of jobs generated but also in a host of ancillary benefits.

"When you've lived in an OECD country and you see how things work there, I would think you become less tolerant of a corruption, of things that don't work, inefficiency, people sitting on their thumbs," says Georges Lemaitre, an expert on workforce migration at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "You want to see your own country with much more available services and with the efficiency that you are used to."

Such benefits, he adds, could become a global pattern in coming years, both from new migration and reverse migration.

In the meantime, those countries losing their allure could also lose their competitive edge. ...

UNCHARITY: Jacqueline's Story

Hope International - Uncharity

"Eight years ago, Jacqueline seemed like the ideal candidate for charity. Struggling to provide, she had turned to a lifestyle of prostitution, leaving her and her four children ostracized and vulnerable. Today, she rejoices in her new life, saying, 'I used to have nothing to talk about, but now I am able to praise God for everything.'"

Rethinking Mission Trips - Bob Lupton

I first encountered Bob Lupton almost twenty-five years ago while in graduate school at Eastern University. Over the years, my appreciation for his insight into community/economic development has only grown. He has written two very important and engaging books in recent years that I recommend to everyone. First, is his book, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor. It offers important insights into destructive ideas we often have about poverty and the poor. Second, and my favorite, is his recent book, Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It). This book goes a little deeper into the same topics but also offers some important tips on how to improve our charitable impulses. I recommend it for every pastor and congregational leader.

Lupton also writes a monthly newsletter for FCS Urban Ministries called Urban Perspectives. I get it each month by email. In his October installment, Saving the World, he talks about the idealism of his youth and disappointments he encountered. Today, the church routinely organizes mission trips, especially for idealistic youth, that are marketed as opportunties to "help the poor." He writes of a woman named Alison who organizes mission trips to Haiti. She emailed him a few months. Lupton writes:

Alison from Colorado who coordinates mission trips to Haiti emailed me recently with these very questions.  She was painfully aware that the service her volunteers performed was largely make-work and their suitcases stuffed with free gifts only perpetuated a hands-out mentality among Haitians.  She asked for my advice. 

Here is Lupton's response. If his response resonates with you, then I highly recommend you get a copy of Toxic Charity and begin thinking about new ways we can do this work better.

From: Bob Lupton [fcslupton@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:44 PM
To: alisons@٭٭٭٭.org
Subject: mission trips

Dear Alison:

I understand the demand to do mission trips and the pressure you feel to continue planning them.  Here are a few suggestions that may make them more redemptive.

Exposing young people (and adults) to the needs of the world and the amazing work of God in harsh environments is important ministry. It opens their eyes, stirs their hearts and draws them into compassionate action. That’s why mission trips can be important in the spiritual development of our youth. And that’s what mission trips should be about – spiritual development, not pretending that they are about saving the world. Not immediately anyway. They are about saving us. Preparing us. Once that is clear, we can venture into Haiti and other places of need with integrity.

We go to learn, not to save.  The mindset of learners is very different from that of servers. Learners listen to others, servers do for others. Learners ask questions, servers offer answers. Learners marvel at the faith of the poor, servers pity the poor. Learners see ingenuity, servers see poverty. Learners affirm the worth of people, servers diminish their dignity. You see where I am going with this?

So how do we structure a mission trip that appeals to the innate desire to make a difference in the world, an experience that deepens the spiritual lives of our youth but doesn’t create false expectations?  And of course, is truly helpful.  First of all, our marketing has to have integrity. The trip is primarily about us, not them. And that’s OK. This is an insight trip to expand our spiritual horizons, see how faith works when resources are severely limited, discover how God is at work among culturally and theologically diverse people.  Such insights can be transformative. They can become the very catalysts that ignite a ministry calling. 

Secondly, we are not on a mission to help the poor by distributing suitcases full of give-away’s or performing meaningless make-work or assuming roles that can better be handled by locals.  We do not promote beggary.  We engage in exchange – economic as well as interpersonal.  We enjoy the hospitality that is extended by our hosts, and we contribute to their economy by participating in the legitimate enterprise of tourism through fair payment for food, lodging , local transportation and preparation time.  And we buy their products.

Thirdly, we prepare our youth for the learning experience by reading books on effective service (like Toxic Charity and When Helping Hurts) and articles on the country, the history and contemporary issues. Learning the language honors people, at least some key phrases.  “Appreciative inquiry” techniques, note-taking and journaling can also be useful. Regular group reflection times during and following the trip will help youth assimilate and internalize what they are experiencing.

It goes without saying that on-the-ground connections with seasoned, in-country practitioners is essential to understand the context, scope and impact of the work. Visiting with several different ministries will broaden the perspective. They are the ones who can arrange discussions with residents as well as fun – like a soccer game with local teens. They will be relieved that they don’t have to set up work projects for your group. Remember, their mission is not to be tour guides. Generous compensation for the valuable time they spend with your group hosting and coordinating schedules would be most appropriate.

Hope this is useful. 

Bob

Does this resonate with you? What would you think about dropping the name "mission trip" for "insight trip"?

How Unequal Are We Compared to Other Nations?

Tim Worstall has in interesting piece about income inequality in Fortune, The Amazing Thing About American Inequality: How Equal The Country Is. Here are some of his observations. Remember that for the GINI index, 0 = perfect equatity, and 1 (sometimes 100) equals perfect inequality:

Census has just released the figures on income inequality in the United States. Fascinating reading it makes too. Well, OK, fascinating for the data geeks like myself perhaps. For there’s an interesting little misunderstanding about these figures. There’s an awful lot of people using them to tell us how amazingly unequal the United States is. When in fact the figures show that the country is nothing out of the ordinary for an advanced industrialised nation.

The problem is that people are looking at the US figures as released and comparing them to those of other countries. Something that you really cannot do given the way that the various sets of figures are collected. Here’s an example at the New York Times:

The Gini index value for the United States in 2011 was 0.475, higher than it was in 2010 at 0.469. The index rose in 20 states last year (including New York); there was no statistically significant change in the rest of the states and the District of Columbia (which, at 0.534, has a higher index value than any state).

The Gini index value for New York State was 0.503, which means the state’s household incomes are about as equally distributed as those in Costa Rica, at least according to the most recent international data available.

The figures they use for a comparison are here. Looking at those you might think, well, if the US is at 0.475, Sweden is at 0.23 (yes, the number of 23.0 for Sweden is the same as 0.23 in this sense) then given that a lower number indicates less inequality then Sweden is a less unequal place than the US. You would of course be correct in your assumption: but not because of these numbers.

For the US number is before taxes and before benefits. The Swedish number is after all taxes and all benefits. So, the US number is what we call “market income”, or before all the things we do to shift money around from rich to poor and the Swedish number (in, fact, the numbers for all other countries) are after all the things we do to reduce inequality.

You can see this here at Wikipedia. ...

Later ...

There are two more points we might make about all of this. From the NYT again:

Of all American states, New York again has the most unequal income distribution, according to a new report from the Census Bureau. Wyoming has the most equitably distributed income.

Well, yes, that’s something that we would pretty much expect actually. The larger your data set the more variance you expect to have in your data set. We would rather expect to have greater income inequality between the 20 million odd in NY State than we would in the 500,000 in Wyoming. ...

... Which brings us to the 300 million people in the US. Is it really fair to be comparing income inequality among 300 million people with inequality among the 9 million of Sweden? ...

And ...

... Which brings us to the second point. Even here the US number is (marginally) over-stated. For even in the post-tax and post-benefit numbers the US is still an outlier in the statistical methods used. In looking at inequality, poverty, in the US we include the cash that poor people are given to alleviate their poverty. But we do not include the things that people are given in kind: the Medicaid, SNAP, Section 8 and so on. It’s possible (I’m not sure I’m afraid) that we don’t include the EITC either.

This article got me curious so I went to the Wikipedia data and created the following table for select OECD countries:

GINI Coefficent for Select OECD Countries
	Before Taxes & Transfers				After Taxes & Transfers
	Mid 80s	Late 2000s	Change		Mid 80s	Late 2000s	Change
Belgium	44.9	46.9	2.0		27.4	25.9	-1.5
Canada	39.5	44.1	4.6		29.3	32.4	3.1
Denmark	37.3	41.6	4.3		22.1	24.8	2.7
Finland	38.7	46.5	7.8		20.9	25.9	5.0
France	38.0	48.3	10.3		30.0	29.3	-0.7
Germany	43.9	50.4	6.5		25.1	29.5	4.4
Greece	42.6	43.6	1.0		33.6	30.7	-2.9
Israel	47.2	49.8	2.6		32.6	37.1	4.5
Italy	42.0	53.4	11.4		30.9	33.7	2.8
Japan	34.5	46.2	11.7		30.4	32.9	2.5
Luxembourg	38.3	48.2	9.9		24.7	28.8	4.1
Netherlands	47.3	42.6	-4.7		27.2	29.4	2.2
New Zealand	40.8	45.5	4.7		27.1	33.0	5.9
Norway	35.1	41.0	5.9		22.2	25.0	2.8
Sweden	40.4	42.6	2.2		19.8	25.9	6.1
United Kingdom	41.9	45.6	3.7		30.9	34.5	3.6
United States	43.6	48.6	5.0		33.7	37.8	4.1
Average	40.9	46.2	5.2		27.5	30.4	2.7
Wikipedia

The table confirms Worstalls points. "Market income" inequality in the United States is fourth highest on the list but not radically differenet from other nations. But the really inetersting insight for me is that inequality has risen for sixteen of the seventeen nations over the last quarter century, with the United States being right at the average rate of change. That says to me that something is going on beyond factors that are particular to the United States.

One thing nearly all these nations have in common is aging populations. In agregate, people make more as they get older and that could be skewing income numbers. I doubt that explains it all. The data makes me wonder if there is something systemic about the nature of post-industrial societies that leads to more income inequality.

The income ineqaulity after taxes and transfers for the United States has grown a little faster over the last quarter century, putting us in first place. Worstall raises an important issue about the Earned Income Tax Credit. EITC has grown in significance in recent years as policy tool. It isn't clear that it is included in the U. S. GINI. If not, I suspect adding it in with in-kind transfers would put the U. S. at least as low as the U. K. or Canada. I've also read other sources that emphasize that nation to nation GINI comparisons aren't strictly accurate because of different standards for what consitutes income and transfers. Still, I think a general statement can be made that inequality after taxes and transfers has been growing across the board as well.

Growing inequality is an interesting development that continues to be quite a conundrum, despite the various populist interpretations that float about.

Intangible Dividend of Antipoverty Effort: Happiness

New York Times: Intangible Dividend of Antipoverty Effort: Happiness

When thousands of poor families were given federal housing subsidies in the early 1990s to move out of impoverished neighborhoods, social scientists expected the experience of living in more prosperous communities would pay off in better jobs, higher incomes and more education.

That did not happen. But more than 10 years later, the families’ lives had improved in another way: They reported being much happier than a comparison group of poor families who were not offered subsidies to move, a finding that was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

And using the gold standard of social surveys — the General Social Survey, in which researchers have questioned thousands of Americans of all income levels going back to the 1970s — researchers even quantified how much happier the families were. The improvement was equal to the level of life satisfaction of someone whose annual income was $13,000 more a year, said Jens Ludwig, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago and the lead author of the study.

This vast social experiment, involving 4,600 families in Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Boston, tested a long-held theory that neighborhood is an important determinant of an individual’s success.

But there was little evidence that the new neighborhoods made much of a difference in either income or education, a disappointment for social scientists, who had hoped that the experiment would lead to new ways of combating poverty.

What researchers did find were substantial improvements in the physical and mental health of the people who moved. Researchers reported last year in The New England Journal of Medicine that the participants who moved to new neighborhoods had lower rates of obesity and diabetes than those not offered the chance to move. Beyond the increase in happiness, the new study found lower levels of depression among those who moved. ...

Ladder of Charitable Giving - Maimonides

I've been reading Taking You Soul to Work by Paul Stevens. In Chapter Eleven, he presents the Ladder of Charitable Giving as articuled by the 12th Century Jewish mystic Maimonides. Nine hundred years later, too many of us have not learned from his important insights. Here is the ladder from the lowest form of charity to the highest form.

1. A person gives, but only when asked by the poor.
2. A person gives, but is glum when giving.
3. A person gives cheerfully, but less than he or she should.
4. A person gives without being asked, but gives diretly to the poor. Now the poor know who gave them help and the giver, too, knows whom he or she benefited.
5. A person throws money into the house of someone who is poor. The poor person does not know to whom he or she is indebted, but the donor knows who has been helped.
6. A person gives a donation n a certain place and then turns his or her back in order not to know which of the poor has been helped, but the poor person knows to whom he or she is indebted.
7. A person gives anonymously to a fund for the poor. Here the poor person does not know to whom he or she is indebted, and the donor does not know who has been helped. But, the highest is this:
8. Money is give to preven another from becoming poor, such as provdiding him or her with a job, teaching the person a trade, or setting up the person in business. Thus, the recipient will not be forece to the dreadful alternative of holding out a hand for charity. This is the highest step and the summit of charity's golden ladder. (78)

Pope John Paul II said that poverty isn't so much about money as it is about being excluded from networks of productivity and exchange. There are many today who bemoan materialism as expressed in our modern day consumerism. Yet many of those who protest consumerism take a materilistic view of the poor. Their primary objective is to redistribute wealth away from those who have more than enough to consume (wasting it on things like jets and yachts) so that others can have more to consume (on things like food and health care). This view of poverty sees people primarily as consumers. We are not. We are stewards. We were made to participate in our own care and to participate in networks of productivity and exchange that benfit the community. That doesn't mean that wealth redistribution isn't a piece of addressing poverty but an anthropology that sees poverty primarily as is an issue of consumption is materialistic and dehumanizing.

Gathering Waste and Making Good of It

Worldwatch: Gathering Waste and Making Good of It

... Sanergy, for example, is a company launched by a group of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management. The group has designed low-profile sanitation centers that can be constructed anywhere to provide hot showers and clean toilets. These facilities can be built quickly and easily with affordable materials. Waste from the centers is deposited into airtight containers that are collected daily. Then it’s brought to processing facilities that can convert it into biogas. The biogas generates electricity, while the leftover material is made into fertilizer.

The company won a USD $100,000 grant from MIT and has been building its first units in Nairobi. It charges a low pay-per-use fee and hopes to grow by franchising the operation of its units, creating an income opportunity for enterprising residents. As the number of toilets proliferates, so too will the amount of energy the company is able to generate from its processing facilities. It hopes to eventually generate enough energy that it can sell its power to the national grid.

The company’s unique and innovative approach is notable for the way it combines the decentralization of waste collection with the centralization of waste processing. Retrofitting the slums with proper sewage drains is a near impossibility and can be an expensive and potentially politically volatile effort in areas where landownership is at best ambiguous. The self-contained units grant access to sanitary facilities to even those far off the grid. But by centralizing the processing of waste, Sanergy’s facilities will take advantage of the economies of scale present in the waste conversion process. ...

Winning the War on Poverty?

Atlantic: Wait, We're Winning the War on Poverty? A New Study Says: Absolutely

... But a new paper from Bruce D. Meyer and James X. Sullivan says it's missing everything. "We may not have won the war on poverty, but we are certainly winning," they write.

When they looked at poorer families' consumption rather than income, accounted for changes in the tax code that benefit the poor, and included "noncash benefits" such as food stamps and government-provided medical care, they found poverty fell 12.5 percentage points between 1972 and 2010.

The graph below tells the story. The official poverty rate (shown in DARK BLUE) is higher today than it was in the early 1970s. But when you measure after-tax income (RED) or consumption (GREEN), the story changes: Poverty rates have declined steadily, and dramatically, since the 1960s.

Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

Interesting piece on the importance of the $10 trillion informal economy in emerging nations.

LA clergy group: Halt Skid Row street feedings

Los Angeles Times: LA clergy group: Halt Skid Row street feedings

LOS ANGELES—A group of downtown clergy members has taken the unusual step of publicly urging other religious organizations to stop feeding homeless people on the streets of Skid Row, saying the effort is well meaning but misguided.

The Downtown Clergy Council, which comprises faith-based leaders from a variety of churches, synagogues and homeless ministries, released a position paper on the longstanding issue earlier this month as a way to raise public awareness that giving away food from the backs of trucks and vans to the down-and-out is not as helpful as it would seem.

Much of the food and wrappings end up in the gutter, creating a trash and vermin problem, while three nearby missions serve 8,000 free meals a day.

On top of that, feeding people on the street takes away the incentive for people to go into the missions, where they can also find everything from toilets to addiction recovery services to help them get off the street.

"They're enabling people to stay in the streets," said Kevin Haah, pastor of New City Church of LA who is president of the council. "It actually backfires in many ways."...

... The clergy members are instead recommending that groups give away bottled water, because people will drink the water and recycle the bottles, as well as hygiene kits, containing items such as soap and toothpaste, which tend to be used rather than dumped. They can also work with missions to decide how to best direct their efforts, they said. ...

Another example of the unintended consequences from good intentions. Ministry of this type requires warm hearts and cool heads. The warm hearts are there but cool heads must think holistically.

Survey: 75% of Homeless Youth Use at Least One Social Network

Atlantic: Survey: 75% of Homeless Youth Use at Least One Social Network

Even without a roof over their heads, young adults find ways to access the Internet.

... Guadagno argues that the results should lead us to rethink the concept of the digital divide of Internet haves and have nots. "To the extent that our findings show a 'digital divide' between undergraduates at a four-year university and age-matched participants in a program for homeless young adults, it is mainly in types of Internet use and not access to the Internet, and that divide is relatively minor," we read. "Since it is clear that the proportions of undergraduates and homeless young adults accessing social networking sites are similar, we assert that the term digital divide is not descriptive of the young adult population." ...

Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5B of Food

BloombergBusinessweek: Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5B of Food

Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidized rations that now serves as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.

Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food are meant for Kishen and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They’re meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of 50 cents a day.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation -- a five-decade-old public distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

“This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society,” said Naresh Saxena, who, as a commissioner to the nation’s Supreme Court, monitors hunger-based programs across the country. “What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it.”...

Isolated and Under-Exposed: Why the Rich Don't Give

Atlantic Cities: Isolated and Under-Exposed: Why the Rich Don't Give

... The study looked at tax returns for people with reported earnings of $50,000 or more from the year 2008 – the most recent year for which data was available. The report found that for people earning between $50,000 and $75,000, an average of 7.6 percent of discretionary income was donated to charity. For those earning $200,000 or more, just 4.2 percent of discretionary income was donated.

Turns out lower giving among the rich likely has much more to do with where they live and who they live near.

As this accompanying article from the journal notes, when the rich are highly concentrated in wealthy enclaves, they're less likely to give as compared with the rich living in more economically diverse neighborhoods. The report found that in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of taxpayers reported earning $200,000 or more, the average giving was just 2.8 percent of discretionary income.

In other words, concentration of wealth is also isolation from the less fortunate. ...

And this, of course, leads to a chicken or the egg question. Is isolation what results in lack of generosity or are less generous people more likely to seek isolation? Probably an element of both is my guess.

The Spent Game (Can You Escape Poverty?)

Several years ago I attended an event at Cross-Lines Community Outreach, one of our favorite service organizations in the Kansas City metro. People were divided up into groups sitting at tables. Each table was to imagine they were a single young woman with a small child at home, living on the edge of homelessness. You were presented with a choice to make. You rolled the dice to see what choice you had to make next. There were financial implications to all the decisions and a running total of your resources went up and down accordingly. The odds of things happening were based to some degree on actual experience. The game stops after several iterations and you see how many people were able to get out of poverty, hold their own, or for whom things got worse. It was a very useful tool.

Urban Ministires of Durham in Durham, North Carolina, has done something similar using a pretty slick website interface. Give it a shot and see how you do:

SPENT

Why You Shouldn't Build a House on Your Next Mission Trip

Outreach: Why You Shouldn't Build a House on Your Next Mission Trip

... Chris [Marlow] is the founder of a non-profit called Help One Now. ...

When a team goes on a mission trip, each person is responsible for raising an extra $500 over and above their actual cost for the trip. The extra money is used to fund housing and other building projects, but not so that the team can go down there to do the work, too. More importantly, the money is used to hire locals to do the work.

The goal is to create jobs. And quite honestly, if we’re doing the work, then we’re taking jobs away. That only creates a reliance on our help and doesn’t actually break the cycle of poverty. We think we’re doing a good thing, and we get even more excited when the locals come out and volunteer their time to help us on this “charitable” project.

Breaking the cycle of poverty means that people need jobs, not volunteerism. They need opportunities, not handouts. Creating a job means that you’re giving someone the means to spend money, which also means that someone else has the opportunity to make money. ...

... The solution is more about creating opportunities for the local communities to own these projects. The jobs, the education, and the responsibility are all essential elements to helping developing nations break the cycle of poverty. This doesn’t mean that we need to stop showing up, but it does mean that we need to rethink what we do when we get there. ...

On Changing an Institution - Bob Lupton

Urban Perspective: On Changing an Institution   Bob Lupton

Changing an institution that is heavily vested in “the way we have always done it” is a major challenge, especially for a pastor whose job it is to keep that institution growing and keep the members reasonably happy.  The last thing a leader wants is to stir up divisive controversy that could alienate good and faithful members.  But a spiritual leader must also have integrity.  So if it becomes apparent that change is necessary to ensure responsible care for the poor, there is no alternative but to act.  But how?

In my experience, too much of church life, from the congregational to the denominational level, is about people trying to stop other people's programs and projects. Ironically, it is the direct assault on a cherished program that usually rallies the program's faithful to defend it, making it even more impervious to change or dissolution. Instead, energy needs to be focused on nurturing an alternative that will create energy and participation that leads in a new direction, drawing people to the new thing, letting the problem program wither and die a peaceful death. I think Lupton is giving a great example of this approach here. I wish more church leaders would think as creatively as this pastor and the congregation in Lupton's story below:

The church was justifiably proud of its community food pantry.  It had grown over the years from a closet in the church basement to a spacious, well-run distribution center with its own separate building adjacent to the church.  It looked more like a small grocery store than a “pantry” with rows of neatly stocked shelves, bins for fresh produce, even a cooler for perishables.  A state-of-the-art computer system kept track of inventory, recorded donor contributions, monitored distributions and the recipients who received them, and maintained good financial records.  Because it was so well run, local grocery stores and bakeries felt good about donating their surplus and outdated food.  Other churches contributed as well. 

 

It was still called “the pantry,” the quaint name left over from its meager beginnings when occasional bags of food were given out by the pastor.  But it had evolved into a full-fledged food distribution operation run more like a business than a basement charity.  It had a full-time director, a part-time bookkeeper and several dozen regular volunteers.  It was now open four days a week and served growing numbers of needy beneficiaries that streamed in from all over the county.  School counselors and agency caseworkers referred clients needing emergency assistance.  The “pantry” had become widely known as an important player in the city’s social safety-net.   As I said, the church was justifiably proud of the ministry of its community food pantry.

 

Then one day a church member handed the pastor a book – Toxic Charity!  It made the case that give-away programs hurt the poor more than they helped, that a crisis response to a chronic need creates dependency, that doing for others what they have the capacity to do for themselves destroys a work ethic.  Needless to say, it was a very disturbing read.  It called into question the validity of their best community ministry.  If it were true, that give-away programs are hurtful, the entire structure of the “pantry” would have to be dismantled.  And not just the “pantry” – much of their service outreach and mission trips would have to be revamped as well!  This is not the kind of disruption a busy pastor needs.

 

What to do?   Dismiss the book and hope it doesn’t get circulated among the membership?  Build a biblical argument to discredit and neutralize the premise of the book?  Admit that every ministry has its flaws but that’s no reason to stop doing it?  Or…  

 

Perish the thought of changing the entire ministry paradigm.  How could you tell all your volunteers that their countless hours of selfless service were unhelpful, even hurtful?  How would you inform all the generous donors that the food they provided had harmful effects?  What would you say to the families and agencies who count on your service?  No, there is no way a pastor is going to do that.  The fallout would be disastrous.  But…

Isn’t community service to be about helping the needy, not just making church members feel good?  And if, as that darn book says, the way the church is doing service actually harms those they are attempting to help, then the program is clearly self-serving.  Not intentionally, but in reality it may be more about the church’s self-interest than about those being served.  Yes, Toxic Charity was indeed a very disturbing read.

 

If the church is going to have integrity, it cannot bury its head in the sand and assume that all is well – not after the alarm has sounded.  Leaders must at least take an honest look at the outcomes of its charity.  Is there really unintended harm being done?  A few discrete, non-disruptive interviews with “pantry” workers might give some clues.  Questions like:  how often do you see the same people in the food lines?  And how many reports do you get back from recipients that the free food has helped them over a temporary tough spot?  And does the “pantry” seem to encourage trusting relationships or do we have to be on guard against abuse of the system?  A few questions like this will provide a bit of insight into whether the program is actually empowering recipients or fostering unhealthy dependency.  Reassuring answers may put the issue to rest.  Or…

 

Or they may raise more questions.  Questions like:  Why are there so few anecdotal success stories?  Or why are recipients not becoming involved in the life of the church?  Or why do the “pantry” workers seem somewhat defensive about the inquiries?  Probe a little deeper and it may become apparent that, as that book claims, the whole well-run, give-away program reeks with hidden toxicities – dependency, deception, dignity-depreciation.  That’s when the real problem arises – how to fix a ministry that most folk don’t think is broken?

Changing an institution that is heavily vested in “the way we have always done it” is a major challenge, especially for a pastor whose job it is to keep that institution growing and keep the members reasonably happy.  The last thing a leader wants is to stir up divisive controversy that could alienate good and faithful members.  But a spiritual leader must also have integrity.  So if it becomes apparent that change is necessary to ensure responsible care for the poor, there is no alternative but to act.  But how?

 

Certainly not a frontal assault.  Too much damage could be inflicted on the “compassion corps” by declaring their good works toxic.  A much subtler change strategy is needed.  Distributing copies of Toxic Charity to key leadership (perhaps covertly) will stimulate considerable discussion.  Such conversations begin working the soil.  Visiting a few innovative models – best practices – being implemented elsewhere by other ministries helps to move the discussion from critique to creativity.  Encourage a few key leaders to attend the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA.org) annual conference, a gathering of practitioner thought-leaders committed to assisting ministries to empower the poor.  That will definitely till up some soil.  It is not at all unlikely that, through a non-confrontational exploration process, interest in new methods of service will be kindled.  A food co-op “buying club” model, a bartering system, a thrift store with deeply discounted basics – such ideas that have succeeded in other places can ignite the imagination, especially of entrepreneurial types.  

 

Adding a new, complementary program is far less volatile than attempting to dismantle and replace an existing one.  The “pantry” stays.  At least for a time.  But alongside it you may chose to offer recipients the option to join a “buying club” co-op in which members pay $3 bi-weekly and receive back ten to twenty times that amount in groceries.  Members, like share holders, have the pride of ownership, control of food selection, and accountability to each other.  Dignity replaces beggary, belonging replaces impersonal food lines.  Like one church discovered, as co-op membership increased food lines dwindled until eventually almost no free food was distributed.  It’s one idea.  The point is this:  transition from “doing for” the poor to “doing with” them need not be disruptive or alienating.  It begins with one decisive step in the right direction.

 

The “pantry” may continue to function for years to come but the shift to empowerment has begun.  A door has been opened that allows church members and recipients alike to experience first-hand the differences between the pridelessness of one-way charity and the dignity of reciprocal exchange.  Outcomes will eventually become obvious.  Once empowerment principles take root and spread beyond the “pantry” to other areas of ministry – benevolence giving, service projects, mission trips – a paradigm of development will become the new norm.

Ministers With MBAs

Inside Higher Ed: Ministers With MBAs

... In the past five years, programs that combine master’s degrees in divinity with business credentials have sprung up, Aleshire says. He sees two reasons: leadership studies have become more common as an academic field, and Christian ministry has expanded beyond the church into nonprofit organizations and social entrepreneurship -- start-up businesses that try to serve a larger good.

But many joint business and divinity programs are intended for students who want to work for religious nonprofits, or for Christian students studying for professional degrees -- like business or law -- who want some theological background.

Seattle Pacific University’s School of Theology offers an M.B.A., but recommends it for students who want to “serve in the marketplace as a Christian grounded in the Scriptures and theology” or be a business manager for a church or religious nonprofit. Palmer Theological Seminary and Eastern University offer an M.B.A. for seminary students who want to work with the poor. Duke University has an option for students to pursue a seminary credential and a law degree.

In most cases, “they’re going to be using it in the broader ministries, where the work of the church and the broader culture intersect and the alternative to the divinity degree is an asset,” Aleshire says. ...

I had the option of doing the joint M.B.A. and M.Div. degree offered by Eastern University and Palmer Seminary (then Eastern Baptist Seminary) back in the late 1980s but went with the M.B.A. option that included theological education at Palmer but not the full M.Div. It ruined me life! ;-) My education there is what me put my on the path to exploring the intersection between faith and economics and I haven't been able to shake it sense.