The Best Ways to Help the Poor, Really
How can you say that you’re not responsible?
What does it have to do with me?
What is my reaction, what should it be?
Confronted by this latest atrocity
Driven to tears, Driven to tears…
–The Police, “Driven to Tears”
(Christianity Today, February 2012.) Concern for the poor is a fundamental pillar of Christian identity and calling. It is a constant theme that flows throughout Scripture, Old Testament and New (Deut. 15:4, Prov. 14:31, Jn. 14.13, Gal. 2:10, Jam. 2:2-6). It has been a definitive mark of the church over history that Christians have cared for the poor in their midst.
But today, courtesy of economic globalization and the web, a plethora of attractive options present themselves to those who want to care for the poor: sponsoring a child, donating a farm animal, making a microfinance loan to a budding overseas entrepreneur, installing clean water in a rural village, getting a morning caffeine jolt with fair-trade (instead of free-trade) coffee—among others!
But do any of these approaches actually help the poor? Or is their main impact in making us feel less guilty about being rich? And of these, which are most effective? By “best” I mean most effective: things that actually work, that have been proven to help free people from poverty. And writing as a developmental economist, I’m also interested in “bang for the buck”—where donated dollars go the furthest in helping the poor. (Read more at ChristianityToday.com.)