I’m not sure about the cost effectiveness, but they have a quote by Michael Kremer in their webpage:
“The country where one is born is the most important determinant of extreme poverty. By facilitating international educational migration, Malengo offers very low-income youth the opportunity to dramatically increase both their own incomes, and those of their families. In my view, each dollar of donation to Malengo is likely to increase the incomes of program participants by more than would be the case for donations to virtually any other organization.“
Michael Kremer
University Professor in Economics, University of Chicago
Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2019
This could well be true. Although When it comes to “cost-effectiveness” of income gains through directly for the beneficiary (Kremers point) the early gains will have a much bigger effect on well-being. There’s decent evidence that each doubling of income seems to have a similar effect on well-being. So “Cost per doubling of income” might be more useful metric than Kremer’s cost per extra dollar generated. These studies also assume that they are living in the same economy, obviously things cost a lot more in Germany so we wouldn’t expect well-being increases to be as big as if that income increase has happened in Uganda
So if they were going to earn 500 euros a month in Uganda and they now earn 4000 in Germany, that might be better seen as a direct 3x increase in wellbeing pointes rather than 8x income.
Even on the doubling-income front the program might still look very good (haven’t looked into it). And I’m not touching on the other potential benefits (remittances), just responding directly to Kremers comment.
I’m not sure about the cost effectiveness, but they have a quote by Michael Kremer in their webpage:
Michael Kremer University Professor in Economics, University of Chicago Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2019
This could well be true. Although When it comes to “cost-effectiveness” of income gains through directly for the beneficiary (Kremers point) the early gains will have a much bigger effect on well-being. There’s decent evidence that each doubling of income seems to have a similar effect on well-being. So “Cost per doubling of income” might be more useful metric than Kremer’s cost per extra dollar generated. These studies also assume that they are living in the same economy, obviously things cost a lot more in Germany so we wouldn’t expect well-being increases to be as big as if that income increase has happened in Uganda
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/coryFCkmcMKdJb7Pz/does-economic-growth-meaningfully-improve-well-being-a
So if they were going to earn 500 euros a month in Uganda and they now earn 4000 in Germany, that might be better seen as a direct 3x increase in wellbeing pointes rather than 8x income.
Even on the doubling-income front the program might still look very good (haven’t looked into it). And I’m not touching on the other potential benefits (remittances), just responding directly to Kremers comment.