I have noticed recently that while there’s a large discussion about how to help the poorest people in the world, I’ve been unable to find any research simply asking the beneficiaries themselves what they think would help them most. Does anyone know more about the state of such research—whether it exists or not, and why?
It seems important to know what problems or even what interventions the poorest people in the world think would help them the most. There are local details that an EA working on global poverty from an ocean away simply doesn’t have access to. Comparing the results of such a survey to empirical impact evaluations could tell us a lot about how important such local knowledge actually is, compared to resources like education and data. Until then, it seems like bad practice to assume we are in a better position to decide on interventions than the beneficiaries with much more detailed knowledge of their situation.
I think this is one of the principals of GiveDirectly. I imagine that more complicated attempts at this could get pretty hairy (try to get the local population to come up with large coordinated proposals like education reform), but could be interesting.
I have noticed recently that while there’s a large discussion about how to help the poorest people in the world, I’ve been unable to find any research simply asking the beneficiaries themselves what they think would help them most. Does anyone know more about the state of such research—whether it exists or not, and why?
It seems important to know what problems or even what interventions the poorest people in the world think would help them the most. There are local details that an EA working on global poverty from an ocean away simply doesn’t have access to. Comparing the results of such a survey to empirical impact evaluations could tell us a lot about how important such local knowledge actually is, compared to resources like education and data. Until then, it seems like bad practice to assume we are in a better position to decide on interventions than the beneficiaries with much more detailed knowledge of their situation.
Here’s one piece of research—it’d be wonderful if there were much more in this vein: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mKGbeX5tQu4zshY4j/alice-redfern-moral-weights-in-the-developing-world
I think this is one of the principals of GiveDirectly. I imagine that more complicated attempts at this could get pretty hairy (try to get the local population to come up with large coordinated proposals like education reform), but could be interesting.