美国国家公共电台 NPR How Do You Know If Aid Really Works? Turns Out ... We Often Don't

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: 

Here's an idea that sounds pretty obvious. Before you spend lots of money on an aid program, wouldn't you want to run a test to make certain the program actually works? If you want to help farmers, should you buy them seeds or just give them cash? If you're trying to protect people from malaria¹, should you hand out millions of bed nets? For years, the answers to those questions were usually taken on faith. NPR's Nurith Aizenman reports on a growing effort to change that.

NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE²: The world has spent billions to help the planet's poorest people. But in a lot of situations, it wasn't clear how much of a difference that was making. Amanda Glassman is chief operating officer of the Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

AMANDA GLASSMAN: In the best-case scenario³, people were measuring what the situation was on the ground before a program happened and after a program happened. But the problem was you really didn't know whether - when things changed - it was because of the program or because of something else.

AIZENMAN: Like good weather or overall improvements to the economy. And Glassman says even those types of studies were rare.

GLASSMAN: In many cases, they weren't collecting any data at all on what the impact of the program was.

AIZENMAN: So program designers largely based their decisions on what seemed logical. Take distributing bed nets in malaria-prone areas. It became a major priority⁴ because lab studies showed the nets really do cut down on mosquitoes. The trouble?

GLASSMAN: What really matters is not just whether the technology - in this case, the bed net - works but whether people actually use it.

AIZENMAN: In fact, on this very point, there was a big debate. See, even though bed nets weren't that expensive, people weren't buying them. Some aid experts argued this meant you should hand out the nets for free. Others said maybe the reason people don't buy them is because they don't think they're that helpful. Abhijit Banerjee is an economist⁵ at MIT.

ABHIJIT BANERJEE: You could argue that, look, if they don't believe in them, and you give it to them, they won't use it.

AIZENMAN: To settle a question like this, says Banerjee, you need a kind of experiment that's the gold standard in science, a randomized, controlled trial. Essentially⁶, you randomly⁷ assign the people you want to study to two groups. One gets access to the program or, quote, "treatment" you want to test. The other group does not.

BANERJEE: If I now observe a difference between them, then it's much more likely that that's because of the treatment.

AIZENMAN: In 2003 Banerjee co-founded a network of researchers at nearly 50 universities dedicated⁸ to doing work like this. And by the late 2000s, some groundbreaking results were coming in. On the bed nets, they found that families that had gotten nets for free were just as likely to use them. It turns out that extremely poor people are just really sensitive to price, even for lifesaving products. For aid groups, this experiment was a game changer.

BANERJEE: Many organizations were very, very reluctant to go to zero price. And I think the weight of this evidence has moved a lot of them.

AIZENMAN: A lot of programs now offer bed nets for free or highly subsidized prices. Findings like this have fueled a surge⁹ in randomized, controlled trials. Banerjee's network alone has done more than 800 of them. And everyone from governments to the world bank does these studies now. But the Center for Global Development's Amanda Glassman says it's still a drop in the bucket.

GLASSMAN: We and some colleagues here have been looking at what share of the total aid portfolio¹⁰ is subject to these more rigorous¹¹ methods. And it's such a small share. It's less than 5 percent still.

AIZENMAN: This includes major areas of U.S. spending.

GLASSMAN: For example, we have a huge HIV/AIDS program. It really matters whether the pills that we distribute are taken in the correct way.

AIZENMAN: Like, is it worth having a health worker actually watch patients take their pills, or is just giving people instructions enough?

GLASSMAN: There's just very few experiments that look at - what does that the best?

AIZENMAN: So, Glassman says, until these experiments take on a larger role in aid decisions, when it comes to helping¹² the poor, mostly, we're still flying blind. Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.

1 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

4 priority   

n.优先处理的事，居先，优先（权）

参考例句：

• The development of the national economy is a top priority.发展国民经济是应予以最优先考虑的事。
• Things should be taken up in order of priority.办事应有个先后次序。

5 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

6 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

7 randomly   

adv.随便地，未加计划地

参考例句：

• Within the hot gas chamber, molecules are moving randomly in all directions. 在灼热的气体燃烧室内，分子在各个方向上作无规运动。 来自辞典例句
• Transformed cells are loosely attached, rounded and randomly oriented. 转化细胞则不大贴壁、圆缩并呈杂乱分布。 来自辞典例句

8 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

9 surge   

n.汹涌，澎湃；vi.汹涌，强烈感到，飞涨；vt.放开，松手

参考例句：

• The surge travelled southwards along the coast.浪涛沿着海岸向南涌去。
• It failed to stimulate a surge of investment in industry.这没有能刺激工业投资的激增。

10 portfolio   

n.公事包；文件夹；大臣及部长职位

参考例句：

• He remembered her because she was carrying a large portfolio.他因为她带着一个大公文包而记住了她。
• He resigned his portfolio.他辞去了大臣职务。

11 rigorous   

adj.严密的，缜密的，严格的，严厉的

参考例句：

• The arms trade should be subject to rigorous controls.对军火贸易应该严加限制。
• The planes have to undergo rigorous safety checks.飞机必须经过严密的安全检查。

12 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。