You won't believe these 8,000 children who are actually going to starve to death today

I'm trying to write a pithy summary or pick a smart quote from Abhijeet Singh's new blog about malnutrition up on Ideas for India but it's hard not to just be deeply depressed when thinking about malnutrition. We apparently live in the 21st Century where flying robots and self-driving cars are real things, yet we aren't collectively bothered enough to do anything about the 8,000 children who starve to death every single day (three million a year). And that's partly because as humans we're more interested in what is interesting than what is true or what is important. 8,000 children starving to death everyday is just something that happens. It isn't new or counterintuitive or surprising.

So Abhijeet's paper is interesting and tells us something different, which should be applauded really just for finding a new angle to bring some attention to one of the most important but dull outrageous injustices there are. The conventional wisdom is that stunting in the first thousand days of life is irreversible. Abhijeet presents evidence to the contrary that giving children a meal every day at age 5 can fully make up for malnutrition due to a drought at age 1. So the policy conclusion is what - don't write-off malnourished children after a thousand days? Or how about maybe how on earth are we still letting children starve in the first place? Enjoy your lunch.

Taking Sen Seriously

Another development report on hunger, another puzzling failure to take Amartya Sen, the power of markets, and simple cash transfers, seriously.

We have known for over 20 years, since Sen wrote the book on famine in 1981, that hunger comes not from there not being enough food being produced, but from some people not having access to that food (either through their own production or through the market).

And yet again and again we hear a weird underpants gnome-esque non-sequitur, in which

1. The problem: There is already enough food in the world to feed everyone
2. ?????
3. The solution: Produce more food!

Not that the 8 proposals are necessarily bad ideas. But the evidence supporting public investment in agriculture is decidedly mixed. We had hunger a long time before land grabs existed. And attacking tax loopholes seems a pretty indirect route to reducing hunger.

Especially when there is one very simple, scalable, cost effective policy, which has a direct impact on food consumption, can help to ensure that everyone can participate in the market and get a stake in the food that already exists (as well as create demand for new production), which has a very strong evidence base behind it, and gets no mention whatsoever.

Givewell summarise:

"Cash transfers are one of the most-studied development interventions ...  

There is very strong evidence indicating that cash transfers lead to large increases in consumption, especially of food... 

Bottom line: Cash transfers have the strongest track records we've seen for a non-health intervention ..."

Of course cash is not a silver bullet. But it is surely part of the solution, and on a much bigger scale than at present. So I'm continually mystified by how something so obvious gets so overlooked. The only conclusion I can come to is that the reason we continue to ignore all the evidence, and in fact the very reason why there has been so much research to begin with, and hence why the evidence base is so strong, is that our industry has such a deep suspicion of actually trusting poor people to make any decisions for themselves. Which is sad.

Chart of the Day: Hunger and Food Waste

This is from a TEDx talk by Simon Moss, and gave me one of those brief confused child why-the-fuck-is-the-world-so-absurdly-unjust moments.

Ending world hunger

Duncan Green is right on point in the Guardian:

Some 850 million people (one in eight of the world's population) go to bed hungry every night. Many of them are children, for whom early hunger leaves a lifelong legacy of cognitive and physical impairment. The human and economic waste is horrifying ... 

Damaged bodies and brains are a moral scandal and a tragic waste of economic potential. That hunger exists at all shows the urgency of redistributing income and assets to achieve a fairer world. Providing the additional calories needed by the 13% of the world's population facing hunger would require just 1% of the current global food supply. That that redistribution has not already taken place is truly something to be ashamed of.

The good news is that there's no need to just sit around railing against the system - YOU can make a real difference right now - there is data, there is evidence, there are really good reliable opportunities for you to totally change someone's life. Or rather, lots of people's lives. And for a sneaky selfish bonus, giving money away makes you happier. Go to Givewell, check out the analysis, and make a donation.