Trade, not aid, is what improves life in the third world – Telegraph Blogs

Trade, not aid, is what improves life in the third world – Telegraph Blogs:

'via Blog this'Thing is, it doesn't work. Jeff Sachs, the demagogue behind the project, had a congratulatory piece in The Lancet a couple of weeks back claiming that all was hugely hunky dory. As it happens, this isn't quite so. Ofthe 18 measurements made, compared to similar villages that didn't have the intervention, only one moved an interesting amount in an interesting direction. The other 17 were much of a muchness and showed very little effect from this extra spending.

The one that did move was child mortality: a very large drop and a very welcome one. There's nothing worse for any of us than to have to bury one of our own children and this applies whether you're poor and brown or rich and pink. Removing that pain and grief, not just the saving of the life, is an addition to the happiness of the world. However, it's now turned out that this drop in child mortality was simply because they were counting wrong. In the Millennium Villages the fall in child mortality has been about the same as it has been in the villages that are not being helped.