Linking from the Chicago Policy Review. The idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained traction over the past decade. While the idea of a basic income has existed since the American and French Revolutions, it has never been implemented on a country-wide level. Myriad questions remain on its execution: should it replace most or…
Category: Development
Why should you care about food dumping?
About three years ago, I published Why should you care about global poverty? I deeply care about global poverty, and I am glad many Americans agree. Since then, I’ve learned that the world is a more complex and terrible place than I’d previously thought. Outside of traditional foreign aid, there are plenty of ways the…
I suppose that’s how things are done here
When I moved to Delhi, I bought a beautiful, hardwood bed, with spring mattresses. My roommate asked why I had done such a thing, and I said that it was because I was planning to stay. I wanted to stay for years. We went to the furniture market in Munirka after dark. Every front shop…
City of Foreigners
This post was originally published at littlethings07. Every city contains many cities. They run parallel to each other, divided by education, or ethnicity, or religion, or preferences. You can live in a city your whole life without seeing many of its sides. I lived in Lusaka for only a year and a half. I was…
Four recommendations to help female surveyors stay safe
Linking from the IDinsight blog. By Siobhan McDonough […] IDinsight’s team interviewed about 20 female surveyors, supervisors, and field managers across four of our global hubs to get a sense of their experiences and challenges. In this post we’ll share challenges female surveyors, supervisors, and field managers have faced and their advice for mitigating risks. In…
Roundup from ISI 2019
Linking from the IDinsight blog. By Siobhan McDonough, Karan Nagpal, and Andrés L. Parrado In December 2019, IDinsight Financial Inclusion team members attended the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) conference on Economic Growth and Development. Manager Andrés Parrado presented a paper on the results of sending SMS reminders to banking agents in rural India. A future blog post will…
A 3-minute primer on air pollution in Delhi
The first time I flew into Delhi in early February, I had the sense we were descending into an abyss of smog. It was like a vortex below us; clear blue sky above, grey clouds of particulate matter below. I wondered when I would see the sky again. The sky came back, blue-grey, in March….
South Delhi and Les Misérables’ Social Suffocation
Last Sunday, I walked around Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Families picnic and cricketers play near thousands of years of ruins, jumbled in intervals through a silent forest. It is lovely, not yet well-known to tourists like the adjacent Qutub Minar, not yet manicured. Plants creep up the rusted gates of tombs. Even on a Sunday afternoon…
Using the Likert Scale to understand open defecation in India
Linking from the IDinsight blog. By Siobhan McDonough, Pulkit Agarwal, Ritika Rastogi, and Karan Nagpal Our team piloted the Likert scale to address social biases potentially influencing participants’ answers. Summary IDinsight aims to use the right evidence tool in each context to find effective solutions to social challenges. We wanted to understand why people were engaging in open…
So you want to change the world? Advice for American college graduates who want to join the development sector
Every so often my peers from college reach out to me to find out how to join the international development sector. Or new development workers reach out wanting to know what to expect. Or recent grads reach out for general work/life tips “because I am entering [tech/finance] but don’t want to lose my soul”. I…