What’s Hot and What’s Not?Changes in development thinking in
the last 5 years
Duncan Green2013
Global Financial Crisis
Global Food Price Spikes
The Arab Spring
Climate Chaos
4 Trends in how we think about Development
• Changing understanding of Poverty• Rising importance of Inequality• Working in Complex Systems• Power and Theories of Change
What is Poverty?
Poverty and volatility
Implications for Aid & Development Agencies
• Change your metrics• Tackling hard core chronic poverty – disabled,
elderly, remote – needs different policies• Smoothing/avoiding/coping with Volatility is
more important than we thought• Resilience = the new fuzzword• Care economy (food price spike, financial
crisis)
Inequality
Globally, it’s the 2%
G20 doing badly
LICs doing better (on average)
‘The Palma’ v Gini: Birth of an Index?
• Ratio of income of top 10% to bottom 40%• Falling v Rising Palma index– X3 in reducing hunger and extreme poverty– X2 in progress on access to improved water– +30% in progress on U5MR
• Worth pursuing?
Implications for Aid & Development Agencies
• Gini or Palma?• Relationships, power and politics• Taxation/Domestic Resource Mobilization• Identify and target ratchet mechanisms
(hyperinflation, volatility, financial exclusion)• V tricky politics, esp for official agencies
Complex Systems v causal chains
Implications for Aid & Development Agencies
• ‘Whole of society’ interventions• Fast feedback and realtime data• Multiple experiments and rapid evolution• Measurement and Results for grown ups • Rules of thumb, not best practice & toolkits• Who to employ? Searchers not planners
The power and change cycle
Power Analysis
Change Hypothesis
Monitor, Learn, Adapt
Select Change Strategies
“In telling us what can be achieved byordinary people through organised
action, this book generates hope even as it enhances understanding of what
is involved in the removal of poverty.”Amartya Sen
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