From Poor Economics:

There is a "psychological sunk cost" effect- people are more likely to make use of something they have paid a lot for. In addition, people may judge quality by price: Things may be judged to be valueless precisely because they are cheap...for example, these subsides can backfire- usage will be low because the price is so low. 

Malaria bed nets, for example, being used as outhouse curtains. I'd seen the rumored bed nets being used as fishing nets and chicken coops, but loved this prime example of bed net creative use in Meatu, Tanzania. Disheartening? Yes.

But don't lose hope:

However, there are now a number of careful experiments that suggest that such anecdotes are oversold. Several studies that have tested whether people use things less because they got them for free found no evidence of such behavior (Cohen and Dupas, 2010).

My favorite academic paper was finally published, in American Economic Review, no less. Nava Ashraf, Erica Field and Jean Lee explore the effect of husbands on fertility decisions in urban Zambia. This is very similar to my own dissertation research project in Tanzania (aka, my life for the past five years), so I'm quite interested in their work.

Similar to my study, the authors use a randomized control trial to measure the impact of husbands involvement in decisions about whether or not to adopt contraceptives. In contrast to my study, the Zambian health worker only visits homes a single time and gives a voucher for free injectable contraceptives (my intervention is longer and contraceptives are already free Tanzania). Women who receive the voucher alone (without their husbands) have the option of adopting contraceptives discretely; women who receive the voucher together with their husbands have a clearer path towards some form of family planning communication. Men in the Couples treatment (e.g. receive together) are essentially given veto power: they are a part of the discussion about the availability of contraceptives and can choose to express their approval, be part of the contraceptive adoption process, prohibit the stuff or be a stick in the mud (among other options). And because men in these samples typically have more bargaining power within the household (economist speak for women not empowered), this sort of inclusion of husbands translates into the power to obstruct.

A somewhat unsurprising discussion in this paper is about the trade-offs between privately improving a woman's set of choices (and gaining utility), while possibly lowering the value of the marriage by the addition of secrecy (the "conjugal value of the marriage"). And in my own study, I've heard some women admit to the short-term benefits of concealed used of contraceptives while bemoaning the risks of secrecy and poor communication in their marriage. In other news, these women tend to have inattentive and unhelpful husbands.

One thing that Ashraf et al. seem to overlook, however, is the possibility of changing the psycho-social cost (economist speak for anxiety) of using contraceptives. 

We do find that [women in the Individual treatment, who had an opportunity to use contraceptives without their husband's approval] experienced a significant reduction in happiness, health and ease of mind compared to those in the Couple treatment. This suggests a longer-term psycho-social cost to concealable contraceptives that can be mitigated by spousal involvement.

While involving husbands in the dialogue over family planning is one way to reduce the burden of secrecy, the elephant in the journal article is that birth control carries this weight of anxiety because it is not socially acceptable in these places. The type of husband whose wife is seriously considering concealed contraceptives is not exactly a well-educated progressive male feminist. He resides in the space where social acceptance matters, traditional gender and tribal roles dominate and mis-education (especially with regards to medicine and healthcare) is rampant. 

In fact, in their large sample, some men who even expressively did not want to have a child in the next two years simultaneously discouraged their wives from using contraceptives, thereby increasing inefficient outcomes (which, in this case, is economist speak for unwanted births). This is not just miscalculated costs or utility, this is something bigger.

Despite my training as an economist, I cannot deny that the psycho-social cost of adopting contraceptives (concealed or not) can be reduced by fuzzy things like social change. Of course, I also acknowledge the standard fertility determinants of microeconomics. But, my work with community health workers in rural Tanzania has given me renewed hope in training, education and development as vehicles to adjust gender norms and create institutional social change. Social change is hard to measure and harder to implement, but when it is done well, the change is undeniable. Poor people's fertility choices may be easier to digest through a simple microeconomic lens, but to study these decisions without at least some acknowledgement of the larger social factors dominating individual action like sexism, culture and social norms is to overlook the greater implications of this research.

1. What my bike taught me about white privilege 

It’s a way of trying to make visible the fact that system is not neutral, it is not a level-playing field, it’s not the same experience for everyone. There are biases and imbalances and injustices built into the warp and woof of our culture.

2. Volatile political battle with racial, religious, and democratic undertones that stemmed from a simple majority school board election.

3. Love is patient, love is kind, love will punch you in an elevator.

4. Interruption versus apology: Gender communication at the office. (Spoiler alert- everyone can do better)

Hat tips: AEK, EGM & ALA

Small incentives for immunizations have large positive effects on using health services in India, so why not employ the same strategy for Golden Gophers? Even grad students like suckers.

In 2013, on the [New York] state exams that gauge proficiency in math and English, Success Academy schools far outscored not only the city’s regular public schools but also its most highly regarded charters, networks like Achievement First, KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program) and Uncommon Schools. At one of [Eva] Moskowitz’s Harlem academies, the fifth graders surpassed all other public schools in the state in math, even their counterparts in the whitest and richest suburbs, Scarsdale and Briarcliff Manor...It might seem as if any New York mayor would be thrilled to have thousands of the city’s most underprivileged children educated so well. But during Bill de Blasio’s campaign last year and then as he claimed City Hall, he and Moskowitz took each other on in a ferocious political battle...For many critics, performance is almost beside the point. To [Diane] Ravitch [New York University professor and education historian], the [charter school] movement itself is destructive; “it undermines the public’s commitment to public education.”...What these philanthropists are all about, Ravitch says, is making themselves feel good while using charters as a halfway step in a covert effort to pull the country toward the privatization of education.

A terrific New York Times article on the battle between New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and charter school network leader Eva Moskowitz.
 
The data-driven accountability approach (read: a lot classroom testing) that charter schools emphasize removes the glossy image around child learning and development. And the growth of charter schools, that use public funds but operate under private authority, competes with the attractive national commitment to mandatory public education. However, that image of promising universal opportunities was actually tainted ages ago when it became clear that public schools were often not successfully educating the country's poor children. The fact that this network of charter schools is able to overturn the giant table of privilege and poverty is evidence of the inexcusable necessity of reform.

Learning is complicated and school reform is hard to do. And my experience has mostly been through my advisor, who mines global nooks and crannies for the specific things that improve learning in poor countries (which is enormously different from the US context).  In other words, I am playing outside my sandbox here. But if a school or charter network is actually improving learning outcomes and closing educational disparities, I think its worth putting Ravich's (and de Blasio's) issue with the principle of charter schools aside. These schools do privatize education to some degree (and certainly introduce competition), but failing to reform for the sake of a national vision is at the expense of too many children. If this network of charter schools is actually working, I say: don't fix it, de Blasio. 

In other news, Maskowitz's advocacy group, Families for Excellent Schools, sounds about as mysterious and ominous as a Koch brothers' super-PAC.

Somewhere between the chaos of the final dissertation data collection (exacerbated by normal life in Tanzania) and a celebratory trip to the French Alps to celebrate the completion of fieldwork, I adopted a French disdain for anything that resembles work in August.

It's September now; welcome back to the blog. Post on public education coming tomorrow.

For this hatrick field season in Tanzania, I opted for some great kindle reading.  This Much I know is True by Wally Lamb (captivating), Nelson Mandela’s autobiography (still working on it) and Expat Etiquette: Looking Good in Bad Places by Michael Bear and Liz Good.

Expat Etiquette is incredibly appropriate to me, full of both legitimately good advice and tongue-in-cheek words of wisdom, and absolutely hysterical truths about being a westerner abroad in a poor country. These truths, however, might not be funny to most of the general public.

Some of my favorites insights [my reactions in brackets]:

This books is a humble guide to all those who not only want to travel far away and sometimes dangerous lands- for the best and worst of reasons- but also want to do so with a modicum of style. Style defines as “appearing to know what you’re doing even when you have no idea what’s happening around you.” [SO true]

Interacting with the Home Front

1. Embrace technology, but do so with [incredible] patience. Learn to love SIM cards, and switch between them strategically [as all Africans do], depending on competing long-distance calling rates. Teach your parents how to use Skype [thanks, M and D!].

2. Develop an adaptable but consistent response to the question “What do you do?” This should be appropriately self-mocking, and should preempt the assumption that you are, in some way or another, trying to “save the world.” Best to knock down pedestals early and often, before you are expected to actually somehow live up to that kind of nonsense. [Besides, even if you arrive with the actual promising good-intentioned naïve objective of saving the world, you will lose any semblance of that goal after precisely 2.5 weeks in country. If you stay for less than that amount of time, you are a tourist and can maintain bliss]

3. Get used to telling friends that you won’t be able to make their wedding/reunion/birthday/baptism-of-their-first-child. [Public apologies to: LPK, MMM, RKF, MC, JMM, MBH, SM]

The Only Piece of Travel Advice that Really Matters

1.      Sh*t will invariably go wrong. Relax. Do your best to develop a zen-like state of detachment.

On the last piece of advice (which is, in fact, the only piece of travel advice that matters):

I’ve noticed that the longer I stay here, the easier it is to be detached and relaxed. But this adjustment in expectations has both advantages and disadvantages. For the first month or so, highs are very high and lows are very low. Meeting new people and having funny conversations make me joyous, but when things go wrong (which invariably happens), I am crushed like a kid hearing Christmas is cancelled. However, after zen sets in and my expectations drop, I tend not to fully realize the meaningfulness of incredible human experiences here.

Daily challenges dissolve into a way of life, but so does the very uniqueness that makes this place different from home.

That is, until I Skype with my mom and she tells me this story is, in fact, a very cool experience and I should write it down. More on that later.

Hat tip: Mom and Dad.

There is a growing body of criticism of young westerners volunteering abroad in developing countries. Questions a potential volunteer should ask herself: What skills do I have that are actually useful to people in rural Gambia? Who will benefit more from my visit: me or people in rural Gambia? What are the potential detrimental effects (cultural, neo-colonial, organizational) of my visit?

While I don't think most volunteers consider all this, it does seem that the fabricated notion of recent-white-college-grad-saving-African-children (link) is coming under more scrutiny. The desire to travel abroad as a volunteer is driven by good intentions, of course, the desire to do something about poverty, although the something is not clear at all. I fell into this idealistic zeal, as a young volunteer in Senegal eight years ago, and I think I’ve come out of that experience (plus living off-and-on living in Tanzania for the past three years) with a more realistic perspective.

The critical self-reflection, of what each volunteer is actually adding to the local economy, culture and the mission of the NGO, should be applied to the developing country organizations themselves. Does taking on volunteers actually fit into the operating mission of this NGO?

In theory that the idea of volunteer work has potential to be beneficial; free labor of course lowers operating costs of an organization, leaving more money for programming itself. In practice, however, managing foreign volunteers can distract enormously from the goals of an organization. I've seen this happen with several NGOs here in Tanzania, organizations stretch their mission to house, manage and accommodate young foreigners.  Managing the volunteers (who are often young, female and inexperienced) often means finding work for them to do that they are both capable of and that feels fulfilling to these travelers, even if that means that local construction workers actually undo the day work done by the volunteers and redo it every night.

The most common type of volunteer abroad is teaching English, and there are plenty of options out there. While English instruction in and of itself is extremely useful, many volunteers who come to teach English have no teaching experience, no experience teaching English as a foreign language, no experience managing large classrooms and no experience with the local language. I quickly learned in Senegal that I am actually a terrible Senegalese English teacher.

We should ask ourselves important questions: what skills will volunteers will bring to the NGO? Would we be building capacity more by using local Tanzanian staff instead of foreigners for this work? Including the costs of finding work for the volunteers and managing their activities, would it be cheaper to use local staff? Are the volunteers meant to be learners or teachers? Are they treated as such? How much staff should be allocated to managing the volunteers?

In fact, it seems that students, the local community and beneficiaries of these foreign volunteers often view the volunteers as tourists (at best) rather than useful vehicles of skill transfers.  In Arusha, young female volunteers are a hot commodity in the dating market. The Tanzanian men who date them are affectionately known as “Rastitutes” for their supposedly appealing dread locks. There’s a nastier word for the young female volunteer who dates a rastitute, but I’ll keep it clean here.

As many volunteers are often young and inexperienced, they usually need guidance navigating a foreign country. Using NGO staff to manage their experiences can’t the best use of labor, as opposed to managing scholarships for poor students, implementing entrepreneurship training or distributing bed-nets. Donor cash should be held accountable to the mission of the NGO, if not actual measurable development outcomes. Does teaching a British volunteer about Tanzanian food and music fall under the poverty alleviation mission of this NGO?

As a personal note, aside from personal experience as a volunteer in Senegal, witness of mission creep of NGOs to accommodate volunteers in Tanzania, I’m also on the board of directors of a small educational NGO in Minnesota that is considering accepting volunteers in Sub-Saharan Africa. I'm pushing back.