Jeffrey Sachs

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May 9, 2012 | 10:36 AM | By

Will new, positive findings allow Jeffrey Sachs to stop shouting back at the critics?

Columbia University

Jeff Sachs

The renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, now director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, seems to irritate people — which also seems to prompt his critics to engage in vitriolic attacks of his efforts to combat global poverty and inequity.

The debates centered around Sachs remind me of some of the people I’d meet as a boy attending church, those folks who would argue angrily, endlessly and insultingly over fundamental disagreements about how best to love thy neighbor.

Whatever one may think about Sachs’ methodology or personality, can’t we all at least agree he has done a lot to promote the causes of global health, social justice and equity? For one, Sachs helped craft the Millennium Development Goals — which, if imperfect, gave the world a strategy for improving global health, reducing poverty and improving the lives of the poor worldwide.

One of Sachs’ biggest projects today is known as the Millennium Villages Project. Not surprisingly, it has been pilloried by many aid experts who say there is no evidence the project does any good.

Well, according to The Guardian, there is now evidence of good from Sachs’ Millennium Villages Project:

Death rates among children under five at the Millennium Villages – set up in Africa to demonstrate what is possible if health, education, agriculture and other development needs are tackled simultaneously – have fallen by a third in three years compared with similar communities, according to the project’s first results.

Sachs, in characteristic form, explodes all over the media with these positive findings to announce a breakthrough in the Huffington Post and to suggest, for CNN, that these results show that we can finally achieve “the dream of health for all, even the poorest of the poor… (This) can become a reality because of recent breakthroughs in technology and health systems.”

A bit over the top, yes, but that’s just the way Jeff likes to talk. You need to keep in mind he started on his campaign against poverty and the diseases of poverty back in the days when, well, hardly anybody gave a damn. He had to shout. And he’s still shouting.

So now, finally, he has some data to back his claims up and can maybe stop shouting.

Or maybe not. As Nature News notes, the findings aren’t likely to stop the critics:

“The core of the problem is lack of transparency and careful, independent analysis,” says Michael Clemens, a migration and development researcher at the Center for Global Development, an independent research institution in Washington DC.

The aid blogger Roving Bandit notes that even if child mortality declined in the Millennium Villages, the project itself found no statistical impr0vements in poverty, nutrition, education or other child health indices.

So I guess, no, the answer appears to be the shouting is likely to continue.

FILED UNDER: Basics, child mortality, Jeffrey Sachs, millennium development goals, poverty
April 12, 2012 | 10:25 AM | By

Jeffrey Sachs: Globalization and ‘corporate governance’ has fueled growing inequality between rich and poor

The renowned and controversial economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University draws a lot of attention, and criticism, in part because he doesn’t mince words (and, lately, for nominating himself to become president of the World Bank).

While some may argue with Sach’s positions or approaches, you can hardly argue that he is your typical boring economist.

The Guardian has published an interesting and provocative video interview with Sachs here. Below is an excerpt.

FILED UNDER: Justice, Politics, Jeffrey Sachs
October 14, 2011 | 9:14 AM | By

The curious case of the Millennium Villages: Arguing why we get better

How many Americans know and/or care about the “Greatest Promise Ever Made” — the Millennium Development Goals?

I haven’t seen a survey, but I suspect the numbers are low. That’s unfortunate because most economists and foreign policy experts say that reducing global poverty and improving people’s lives makes the world a better, safer, healthier and more prosperous place for all of us.

That’s what the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aim to achieve by 2015. The MDGs represent the international communities’ basic yardstick for measuring whether things are getting better out there. Whether the MDGs represent the best way to measure things getting better is another issue. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Center for Global Development, Jeffrey Sachs, Kofi Annan, millennium development goals, Millennium Villages
November 4, 2010 | 11:44 AM | By

Why is everyone always picking on Jeff Sachs?

Okay, that’s not my real question. I think I know why people pick on Jeff Sachs.

Earth Institute

Jeff Sachs

Sachs, an economist and director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, makes bold statements. He criticizes powerful people. He’s in cahoots with the United Nations (I believe he owns a black helicopter). He frequently expresses pure outrage at the indifference shown to problems of global poverty and inequity. Heck, Sachs is influential and outspoken. It’s healthy to push back at such folks.

Lately, the pushback is focused on an initiative Sachs and his gang launched a few years ago called the Millennium Villages Project. It’s intended to show by 2015 how even small, inexpensive but targeted investments can make a big difference in poor communities. Fourteen communities in Africa were selected for the project. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Science, Center for Global Development, Chris Blattman, Jeffrey Sachs, millennium development goals, Millennium Villages
September 22, 2010 | 8:30 AM | By

Two economists battle over aid

Millennium Development Goals

I am not an economist, but even I can figure out that how development money is disbursed can have almost as much impact on success or failure as what it is spent on.

As the UN anti-poverty confab — the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit — winds down, I thought it worth pointing out these two economists arguing over how we approach foreign assistance.

The first article (requires a free subscription to the Financial Times) is by Jeffrey Sachs, at Columbia University.

Sachs makes the case that foreign aid will be more efficient if we truly collaborate and pool funding into multilateral initiatives like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Here is Sachs’ article.

The second article is by another New York economist, William Easterly, at New York University. Easterly points out that the last anti-poverty goal — MDG 8, basically aimed at developing fair trade –  has largely been ignored. Easterly thinks business development is the way to go and direct assistance programs (like the Global Fund) are not.

He notes that truly committing to MDG 8 would mean calling for, among other things, an end to “rich countries perpetuating barriers that favor a tiny number of their businesses at the expense of impoverished millions elsewhere.”

Here is Easterly’s article.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, Bill Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs, millennium development goals
September 17, 2010 | 3:03 PM | By

Jeff Sachs on those MDG things

The 8 Millennium Development Goals

I talked the other day with Jeff Sachs — director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, author and a noted (frequently controversial) economist — by telephone, along with a few other journalists.

We talked about the MDGs, or Millennium Development Goals.

Those icons up there and over to the left represent the 8 MDGs — food, education, women, a decapitated teddy bear, a woman again but this time with a heart in her stomach, drugs, a four-leaf clover and a double Siamese Twin.

Okay, just kidding. That’s not what the MDGs are all about.

In fact, these international development targets represent a serious and somewhat successful attempt by the international community, launched in 2000, to reduce poverty and improve the welfare of the world’s poorest people. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, Jeffrey Sachs, millennium development goals