Want to Help People? Just Give Them Money

Harvard Business Review writes that GiveDirectly’s rigorous data shows that no-strings-attached cash transfers improve health and downstream financial gains.

The data fights conventional wisdom: Money spent on alcohol and cigarettes either decreases, stays constant or increases in the same proportion as total other expenses.

And they have a new concept: What if cash transfers to the poor are used as a standard benchmark against which to measure all development aid? What if every nonprofit that focused on poverty alleviation had to prove they could do more for the poor with a dollar than the poor could do for themselves?