I’m a bit late, but hopefully you’re still monitoring this. I’ve been donating to GiveDirectly for a number of years now, and support your work and mission.
I’d love to learn more about how Give Directly imagines these public goods will arise, however. To me, this limitation depending on public good provision is the core limitation of cash transfers. Yes, cash transfers can help people access public goods such as education and healthcare in places such as Rwanda where you mentioned (I don’t know the detailed context of Rwanda but will suppose that education and healthcare are available and of sufficient quality for the sake of argument), but there are still many countries, particularly in remote settings, where such public goods—particularly of a high quality—are not available.
At Give Directly do you view your work as providing the cash transfers only, and see it as up to others to try to fix the adequate public good provision problem? Does giving cash transfers allow you to access and influence governments in the countries you operate? Do you have any theory of change of how EAs, development agencies etc can best advance adequate public good provision, particularly in areas prone to conflict (e.g. the Sahel), and/ or corruption?
Otherwise, it seems that cash transfers could certainty reduce extreme poverty, perhaps very well, but are unlikely to end poverty. This is particularly pertinent if you define poverty also in terms of access to adequate services (as implied by the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, for instance), or in terms of assets (Reardon and Vosti, 1995) (e.g. due to agricultural land being divided up into smaller and smaller holdings when inherited due to population growth).
Luke Spajic
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Hi Kuiyaki, after spending 2 months in Uganda last year and working at the World Food Programme, I’m very sympathetic to this opinion and believe it has potential. Is there any work you’re doing to advance such approaches, or any groups you’d point to? Thanks