News & Reviews

Lessons from Books, Movies and Current Events
August 28, 2019

What Science Says About Anti-Poverty Programs

If you were watching the PBS News Hour on Friday night, you would have seen a piece entitled “A Scientific Approach to Evaluation Global Anti-Poverty Programs.”  […]
August 21, 2019
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How Can We Tell if the Business Roundtable is Serious?

A New Purpose for Corporations? On August 19, 2019, the Business Round Table, a gathering of 200 of the largest businesses in the US, decided to […]
July 3, 2019

Choosing to Blind One Eye

The divine messenger appeared to the peasant farmer. “The Almighty has decided to bless you, hard-working farmer. Whatever you wish for will be granted.” The farmer […]
June 6, 2019

Why I Went to Prison

Step to the Line “All those who have committed a crime that caused them to be arrested and imprisoned, step forward,” the leader called out. A […]
May 9, 2019

How Do We Extend Mental Health Care to Those Who Can’t Afford It? Try Grandmothers and Benches

How a psychiatrist from Zimbabwe is revolutionizing access to mental health care.
April 25, 2019

The Cost of Inequality

Almost every social problem gets worse with greater income inequality and improves when there is more equality. This is true not only for the poor but also for the rich, who have longer life spans and better quality of life in countries with less inequality.
April 3, 2019

Are We On Pace to Reach the 2030 Goal of Ending Extreme Poverty?

Measure By How Far We Have Left To Go   “Don’t calculate your arrival time based on how far you’ve come, calculate based on how far […]
March 13, 2019

Escape Velocity

Lift-Off   On the table rested a newspaper clipping.  The article announced that the SpaceX Crew Dragon 2 would launch at 2:49 am that night.  A […]
February 14, 2019

Searching for Positive Deviants

What comes to mind when you hear the term Positive Deviant – an optimistic misfit, an affirming nonconformist, a heavy metal band with uplifting lyrics?  In […]
January 22, 2019

“A Single Garment of Destiny”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a lot to say about poverty as well as racial injustice.  I wrote this post for the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s […]