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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners, You're probably pretty used to

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Speaker 1: me dispelling the myth that money can buy happiness, but

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Speaker 1: this episode is a bit of an exception. Today I'll

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Speaker 1: be telling you that sometimes cold, hard cash, no strings attached,

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Speaker 1: can really do amazing things like transforming lives. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I'll be giving you the chance to use a small

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Speaker 1: amount of your own cash to make a huge difference

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Speaker 1: to hundreds of families.

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Speaker 2: Kabobo, I think, is a great place if people want

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Speaker 2: someone to support people there are living in really desperate situation.

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Speaker 2: They lack almost everything.

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Speaker 1: But more on that in a moment. The holiday season

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Speaker 1: is upon us, that most wonderful time of the year,

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Speaker 1: and there are indeed lots of wonderful, happiness inducing activities

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Speaker 1: about to take place, from festive decorating to family gathers

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Speaker 1: to parties. But this wonderful time of the year is

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Speaker 1: also known for another happiness boosting tradition, giving, and I

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Speaker 1: don't just mean wrapping gifts. This is the season to

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Speaker 1: help people in need. The importance of generosity has even

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Speaker 1: been codified into one of my favorite annual occasions, Giving Tuesday,

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Speaker 1: the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, coming after consumption oriented Black Friday

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Speaker 1: and Cyber Monday is now a day when many charities

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Speaker 1: launch fundraising campaigns and many people commit to donating to

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Speaker 1: good causes. Traditionally on Giving Tuesday, We've brought you an

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Speaker 1: episode about the happiness benefits of charity. But we don't

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Speaker 1: just focus on any old giving. No, we want people

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Speaker 1: to give as effectively as possible.

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Speaker 3: The reason why we're spending money on charity, let's say,

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Speaker 3: is because we really want to help. We want to

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Speaker 3: do some good, and very few of us would say, well,

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Speaker 3: I want to do good, but not that much good.

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Speaker 1: This is Josh Green, a Harvard psychology professor and one

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Speaker 1: of the brains behind giving dot org.

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Speaker 3: Most people don't know this. The most effective charities in

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Speaker 3: the world are orders of magnitude more effective than typical charities.

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Speaker 3: And when I say effectiveness, I'm talking about how many

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Speaker 3: lives can you save for per dollar, per thousand dollars

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Speaker 3: or ten thousand dollars, or how much can you improve

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Speaker 3: people's lives.

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Speaker 1: And that's where giving multiplier dot org comes in. It

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Speaker 1: allows you to give to the charities you already care about,

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Speaker 1: but to also contribute to one of these super effective organizations.

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Speaker 1: Preventing disease and curing blindness. With every dollar, you enter.

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Speaker 3: The amount of money that you want to donate, and

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Speaker 3: then we have this very nifty little slider where you

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Speaker 3: put the amount in and then you can slide it

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Speaker 3: to decide, Okay, do I want to split it fifty

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Speaker 3: to fifty or do I want to give like eighty

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Speaker 3: percent to the one charity and twenty percent to the other.

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Speaker 1: Over the last two years, listeners have been going to

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Speaker 1: giving Multiplier dot org slash Happiness Lab and being pretty

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Speaker 1: hardcore with their generosity. You've raised nearly half a million

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Speaker 1: dollars to date, and a lot of that money has

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Speaker 1: gone to super effective charities, which is totally incredible. If

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Speaker 1: you like splitting your donations between your favorite cause and

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Speaker 1: an effective charity, please go back to giving Multiplier dot

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Speaker 1: org slash Happiness Lab. But this year we want to

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Speaker 1: zoom in on just one of the amazing nonprofits that

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Speaker 1: Giving Multiplier works with, one with an incredibly simple mission.

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Speaker 1: It's called giving directly and that's basically its mission to

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Speaker 1: simply give money away, which might at first glance sound

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Speaker 1: kind of irresponsible. Right, charities should be carefully spending your

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Speaker 1: donations buying medicines and school textbooks or digging wells. But

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Speaker 1: give directly transfers cash to people in extreme poverty, no

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Speaker 1: strings attached, no questions asked, and trust them to spend

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Speaker 1: it to improve their own lives. This idea challenges a

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Speaker 1: lot of our prejudices. Can we really be sure that

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Speaker 1: people will use the money well if we don't control

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Speaker 1: how they spend it.

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Speaker 4: My name is Drying Jow and called me Jay Z

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Speaker 4: an associate professor in psychology and Sustainability at the University

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Speaker 4: of British.

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Speaker 1: Columbia Happiness Scientists. It's an expert on how people make

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Speaker 1: decisions when they don't have enough money for their basic needs.

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Speaker 1: It's a problem she's experienced.

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Speaker 4: I grew up in poverty because I was born and

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Speaker 4: raised in China in the ninety eighty, so I grew

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Speaker 4: up in poverty for the first ten years of my life.

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Speaker 4: But when I got my PhD from Princeton, I was

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Speaker 4: homeless for three months my student status expired. I was

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Speaker 4: waiting for my work permit from the Canadian consulate, which

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Speaker 4: was on strike indefinitely. I basically house served for three months,

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Speaker 4: probably slept on ten different couches that I can keep

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Speaker 4: track of and it was rough. It was definitely very difficult.

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Speaker 1: Jay Z's lived experience has informed her research, but it's

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Speaker 1: also been a source of continued pain, especially when people

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Speaker 1: challenge her right to talk about poverty or dispute her

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Speaker 1: life story.

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Speaker 4: I've gotten a lot of the comments from the public

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Speaker 4: on you're not really homeless, you are such a privileged person,

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Speaker 4: you know, what do you know about poverty? Then I

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Speaker 4: have to tell them about my own lived experience, and

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Speaker 4: then they try to discount it by saying, you're not

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Speaker 4: on the street, You're not the ones that we see

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Speaker 4: on the street that are using substance and sleeping outdoors.

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Speaker 4: And my response to that is people on the street,

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Speaker 4: like the typical homeless person that we have in mind

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Speaker 4: is not the actual typical homeless person. In reality, people

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Speaker 4: who are sleeping on the streets using substance in daylight

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Speaker 4: only represent I would say less than ten percent. The

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Speaker 4: vast majority of people are hidden. They are not in

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Speaker 4: public view because they're in shelters, they're couch serving, they're

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Speaker 4: sleeping their cars, they're sleeping in abandoned buildings. And therefore

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Speaker 4: the public perception of homelesses is highly distorted from reality.

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Speaker 1: Talk to me first about the usual approach to solving homelessness.

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Speaker 1: How do people normally try to target this issue.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, the typical approaches to homelessness is to provide emergency

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Speaker 4: services like shelters. You can only stay for one month,

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Speaker 4: that's the kind of the maximum length of stay. Usually

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Speaker 4: a social world is assigned to you in the shelter

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Speaker 4: to help you find housing and food, et cetera. Or

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Speaker 4: health services so detox programs if you have substance use issues,

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Speaker 4: et cetera. Those are, in my mind paternalistic services because

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Speaker 4: it's already assuming that people need somebody else to tell

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Speaker 4: them what to do. That's the social workers aspect, and

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Speaker 4: that I think these approaches are not working. I mean

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Speaker 4: this is not just my personal opinion. It's actually evidenced

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Speaker 4: by this exploding homeless populations in North America. So it's

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Speaker 4: clear that the current approaches are not helping reduce homelessness.

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Speaker 4: And that's what got us thinking, is there something else

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Speaker 4: we need to try?

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Speaker 1: This led jay Z to study the effectiveness of a

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Speaker 1: radical solution when many people might consider naive or irresponsible.

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Speaker 1: What are known as cash transfer programs.

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Speaker 4: So cash transfer is giving money directly to people living

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Speaker 4: in poverty. This can happen with some conditionality attached to it,

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Speaker 4: like you need to participate in finish this you know,

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Speaker 4: detox program to get paid, or the cash can be unconditional,

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Speaker 4: meaning you're just getting the cash with no strains, no

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Speaker 4: requirement attached. A lot of the current welfare programs in

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Speaker 4: the world focus on asking people to jump through hoops

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Speaker 4: and file applications for various income assistants or welfare programs.

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Speaker 4: Those hurdles can be taxing for people living poverty. They

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Speaker 4: have multiple jobs to juggle with, they already short on physical, cognitive,

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Speaker 4: and time bandwidth, and asking people to do extra things

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Speaker 4: so they can qualify or get social assistance is I

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Speaker 4: think actually counterproductive, and this is why we don't see

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Speaker 4: a huge take up rate of the government provided social assistance.

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Speaker 4: So I think that's partly why the current welfare programs

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Speaker 4: are not really helping people get out of poverty. And

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Speaker 4: another aspect of this is that the welfare programs are

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Speaker 4: designed with paternalistic mindsetting. By that I may dictate what

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Speaker 4: people in poverty should and should not get, whereas cash

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Speaker 4: transfer is the opposite. It basically tells people you can

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Speaker 4: do whatever you want with the cash. We believe in you.

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Speaker 4: You make the best decisions for yourself.

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Speaker 1: And so walk through the nuts and bolts of the

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Speaker 1: cash transfer program you applied in Vancouver. How did it work?

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Speaker 4: So we deployed a team of interviewers to twenty two

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Speaker 4: shelters in Vancouver to recruit participants. We ended up recruiting

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Speaker 4: one hundred and fifteen people into the trial and we

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Speaker 4: randomly assigned fifty of them to receive a one time,

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Speaker 4: unconditional cash transfer of seven thousand, five hundred dollars. And

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Speaker 4: the reason for seventy five hundred dollars was that it

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Speaker 4: was the annual income assistance in British Columbia back in

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Speaker 4: twenty sixteen when we designed the trial. They also receive

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Speaker 4: income assistance also, so this is in addition to the

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Speaker 4: welfare checks they're getting, not to replace what they're currently getting.

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Speaker 4: Where we carefully screen people based on substance use, alcoholou use,

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Speaker 4: and psychiatric symptoms. So this particular subset representative on a

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Speaker 4: third of the shelter population in Vancouver.

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Speaker 1: When you followed up, what did you find?

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Speaker 4: So we followed them for a year and we found

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Speaker 4: that this cash resfer reduced homelessness by ninety nine days

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Speaker 4: per person, and that's pretty significant. I mean, I couch

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Speaker 4: surved three months, and I had great social support during

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Speaker 4: those months, but putting somebody into stable housing three months

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Speaker 4: earlier is tremendous. It reduced risks of harm assaults, developing

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Speaker 4: further substance use or mental health issues, and also importantly,

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Speaker 4: they became less reliant on social services over one year.

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Speaker 4: So each cash recipient actually saved the government eighty two

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Speaker 4: hundred and seventy seven dollars on average, So the net

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Speaker 4: savings was over seven hundred dollars. That suggests that this

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Speaker 4: cash resker is cost effective. It's less than what we

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Speaker 4: currently spend on managing homelessness.

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Speaker 1: But I think a lot of people have this paternalistic

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Speaker 1: instinct because they start worrying that people might not spend

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Speaker 1: the money on things that are good. I think there's

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Speaker 1: this stereotype that low income people are going to spend

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Speaker 1: the money on drugs or quite frivolously. You know, what

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Speaker 1: does the data really say when it comes to cash

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Speaker 1: transfer programs.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you point to an excellent barrier for a lot

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Speaker 4: of public policy, which is people's stereotype of those who

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Speaker 4: live in poverty. But I think this stereotype is not

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Speaker 4: only wrong but also harmful. It's wrong because that's not

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Speaker 4: what data says. The evidence, including our studies, says that

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Speaker 4: when people receive the cash, even when they're homeless, when

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Speaker 4: they're in extreme poverty, they actually don't really spend the

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Speaker 4: money on alcohol and drugs and these temptation goods. Instead,

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Speaker 4: they spend it on rant food, things that you need

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Speaker 4: to survive. And there are dozens and dozens of studies

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Speaker 4: out there to show cash transfers actually don't increase spending

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Speaker 4: on temptation goods. Instead, there's a significant decrease in spending

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Speaker 4: on temptation goods after the cash transfer.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like people don't need the temptation goods as

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Speaker 1: much when they aren't stressed, because they can, you know,

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Speaker 1: put food on the table in these things.

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Speaker 4: Right exactly. I mean, that's the the kind of the

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Speaker 4: self medication part of poverty, or at least with the

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Speaker 4: homeless population of Vancouver. What we found was there's actually

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Speaker 4: a marginal decline in substance use severity after getting the

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Speaker 4: cash transfer. So what this suggests is that people don't

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Speaker 4: need to use alcohol and drugs when they're in back

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Speaker 4: in housing. When you're in poverty, you're short on cognit

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Speaker 4: band with you actually to use substance to even survive

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Speaker 4: on the street. Some of our participants say they actually

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Speaker 4: need to stay warm with alcohol and that's why they

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Speaker 4: drink on the street. But once they get back into housing,

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Speaker 4: they don't need alcohol anymore. So it's kind of a

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Speaker 4: survival coping mechanism instead of the cause of homelessness in

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Speaker 4: the first place. That's why this stereotype is wrong, and

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Speaker 4: I think it comes from the misconception that people end

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Speaker 4: up in poverty because they screwed up, they made mistakes,

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Speaker 4: therefore they cannot be trusted with money. That's typically not

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Speaker 4: the case. People become homeless because they couldn't pay rent

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Speaker 4: for two or three months and then eventually they're evicted

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Speaker 4: by their landlords, and that's the primary reason for homelessness,

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Speaker 4: at least in Vancouver. I just think that our idea

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Speaker 4: of somebody in poverty or homelessness needs to change. That's

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Speaker 4: why I did the subsequent studies after the cash ranks,

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Speaker 4: for studies looking at public perception. The average person thinks

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Speaker 4: that the cash recipients will spend more than three hundred

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Speaker 4: dollars on alcoholic drugs and cigarettes per month. That's their prediction,

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Speaker 4: whereas in reality the spending was.

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Speaker 1: Only around one hundred dollars.

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Speaker 4: It's actually less an average person spends on alcoholic drugs

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Speaker 4: and cigarettes on a monthly basis.

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Speaker 1: It just seems so obvious then that we need to

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Speaker 1: start using cash transfers more often to alleviate poverty.

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Speaker 4: Oh completely. So first of all, people actually I see

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Speaker 4: this as justification biers all the time. They think the

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Speaker 4: governments are doing great when it comes to poverty with homelessness.

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Speaker 4: What they don't know is how much we're currently spending

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Speaker 4: on homelessness in the US. You know, the government is

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Speaker 4: spending over eighty thousand dollars proportion per year, so they

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Speaker 4: don't know that poverty is extremely costly. If we use

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Speaker 4: the eighty thousand dollars to do the cash transfers, I

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Speaker 4: feel like we can actually get a lot of savings

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Speaker 4: and actually reduce poverty meaningfully as opposed to the status.

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Speaker 1: Cool j Z's work shows that cash transfers just giving

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Speaker 1: people cash directly saves money while solving tough problems of

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Speaker 1: homelessness and poverty. In North America. But what about extreme poverty. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's one nonprofit that gives money to the world's poorest

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Speaker 1: people and things Happiness Lab listeners can transform the lives

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Speaker 1: of an entire village. We'll learn more when the Happiness

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Speaker 1: Lab returns in a moment. Thanks so much for taking

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Speaker 1: the time for this. We're so excited to be collaborating

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Speaker 1: with Give Directly and former politician Rory Stewart used to

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Speaker 1: be in charge of Britain's four and eight budget billions

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Speaker 1: and billions and billions of dollars. He now works with

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Speaker 1: Give Directly, the nonprofit we're partnering with to send money

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Speaker 1: straight to people in one poor village in Africa.

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Speaker 2: Giving people cash directly, it's a very radical idea because

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Speaker 2: traditionally people used to say, give someone a fish they

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Speaker 2: eat for a day, teach them to fish they eat

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Speaker 2: for a lifetime, and cash seems like the ultimate fish

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Speaker 2: giving program. The strange thing is that when we've studied

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Speaker 2: this scientifically, the astonishing revelation is that cash outperformost all

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Speaker 2: the traditional programs. Just giving someone cash needs to better

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Speaker 2: nutrition outcomes than running a nutrition training program. Now why

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Speaker 2: is this? And we see these results again and again.

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Speaker 2: I mean sort of three hundred of these studies, so

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Speaker 2: many that we can't doubt it anymore. And it seems

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Speaker 2: to be that the reason for this is that what

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Speaker 2: people in villages around the world in extreme poverty lack

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Speaker 2: is not knowledge, it's cash. So you turn up thinking

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Speaker 2: that what you need to do is teach people to fish.

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Speaker 2: But the truth of the matter is they either already

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Speaker 2: know how to fish, don't have the money for a

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Speaker 2: fishing rod, or they don't want to fish, they want

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Speaker 2: to open a bakery.

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Speaker 1: And my understanding is that this is something that you

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Speaker 1: came to like slowly over time, that you weren't necessarily

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Speaker 1: a huge fan of cash transfers initially, but that you

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Speaker 1: came around to the data. You know, So talk about

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Speaker 1: your path to changing your mind on this.

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Speaker 2: When I was the Minister responsible for International Development in

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Speaker 2: the United Kingdom, we were then spending nearly twenty billion

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Speaker 2: dollars a year on international development, I was still buying

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Speaker 2: into the old system. I still thought it was all

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Speaker 2: about training people, teaching people, and I thought, well, if

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Speaker 2: we give away cash, what are all doing. You know,

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Speaker 2: I've got thousands of civil servants all over the world.

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Speaker 2: What's the points of their master's degrees in international development?

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Speaker 2: There's speciality in health or education. If we're just going

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Speaker 2: to give people cash, it's a very threatening model. So

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Speaker 2: my mind was changed really by visiting a community on

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Speaker 2: the Rwanda Burundi border which was funded by giftdirectly. It

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Speaker 2: was life changing, I mean absolutely life changing. This was

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Speaker 2: almost too years ago now, because I saw that giving

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Speaker 2: about in those days seven hundred and fifty dollars per

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Speaker 2: household to a village of about one hundred houses completely

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Speaker 2: transformed people's lives in a way that I could never

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Speaker 2: have guessed and in a way that I knew perfectly

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Speaker 2: well the international development community would never have achieved with

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Speaker 2: its normal programs. So what does that mean. That means

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Speaker 2: that if you were to go to that village, you

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Speaker 2: would find that within about three months, suddenly you go

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Speaker 2: from almost nobody having a tin roof to almost everybody

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Speaker 2: having a tin roof. You suddenly find electrification going from

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Speaker 2: about forty percent to about eighty percent, livestock ownership again

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Speaker 2: going from about a third of people to almost eighty

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Speaker 2: percent to people having livestock, huge improvements in the number

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Speaker 2: of kids in school in Bone density, and you're achieving

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Speaker 2: it all for a village to that size, for I

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Speaker 2: suppose probably about one hundred thousand dollars. Now, if you

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Speaker 2: were to turn around and say to a traditional nonprofit,

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Speaker 2: how much would it cost you to achieve all those

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Speaker 2: things I've just been talking about, the answer would be millions,

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Speaker 2: because they would go and they would survey every house,

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Speaker 2: they'd try to procure the metal roofs, they'd bring in

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Speaker 2: their engineers, they'd run education enrollment programs, they'd run nutrition programs,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. And they would probably achieve potentially even less

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Speaker 2: for much much more money because they're not tapping into

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Speaker 2: the knowledge of the local individual. The point is that

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Speaker 2: every individual in each house in Thatt village has a

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Speaker 2: separate set of needs and we need to respect that,

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Speaker 2: give them dignity given freedom to address them. And that

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Speaker 2: turns out to be the most effective way of doing

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Speaker 2: development as well.

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Speaker 1: And so given all these successes, I'm wondering why more

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Speaker 1: organizations aren't just giving cash away. You know, why are

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Speaker 1: people skeptical given all these amazing data suggesting that it

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Speaker 1: works really well.

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Speaker 2: I think there's an element of vanity. I think a

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Speaker 2: lot of philanthropists don't just want to give cash. They

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Speaker 2: want to feel that they've got a brilliant business brain

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Speaker 2: and they've set up an amazing company, and therefore what

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Speaker 2: people need is not their money but their brain. Neither

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Speaker 2: are endless stories of wealthy people thinking that they'd be

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Speaker 2: embarrassing to their friends when they say, what do you

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Speaker 2: do feel flaxtory? Oh, I just give cash. They want

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Speaker 2: to have an interesting story at a dinner table. They

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Speaker 2: want to be able to say, oh, no, I've invented

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Speaker 2: a sea saw which also acts as a pump for water,

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Speaker 2: so when children go on the sea saw at pumps

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Speaker 2: water of the village. Or I've realized that if you

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Speaker 2: give chickens to people, the chickens have eggs, and the

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Speaker 2: eggs have more chickens. They want to feel that they've

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Speaker 2: found some new idea, some silver bullet. They're not at

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Speaker 2: all comfortable with the idea that actually their ideas are

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Speaker 2: much less important than their money.

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Speaker 1: And so that's kind of a wealthy philanthropists version of

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Speaker 1: why they're a little bit worried about giving money directly.

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Speaker 1: What do you think about people who are just, you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to donate, you know, fifty dollars one hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars someone who's donating a small amount, but that has

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Speaker 1: some worries about whether or not that money will go

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Speaker 1: to something really useful.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think if you're donating a small amount, there's

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Speaker 2: almost nothing better than cash. If you give fifty or

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Speaker 2: one hundred dollars to a traditional nonprofit, I don't know

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Speaker 2: what they do with that money. Their budgets are enormous,

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Speaker 2: they have incredible number of staff, Their implementation and costs

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Speaker 2: are very high, so that money will disappear very quickly.

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Speaker 2: But fifty or one hundred dollars delivered to someone in

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Speaker 2: extreme poverty has one hundred times the impact that it

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Speaker 2: would in the United States. It like giving five thousand

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Speaker 2: or ten thousand dollars to someone in the United States.

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Speaker 2: It might be the recipient's first chance to have a

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Speaker 2: roof on their head, the first chance to get the

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Speaker 2: children to school, the first chance to eat more than

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Speaker 2: one meal a day.

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Speaker 1: And that's the kind of thing that Give Directly does

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Speaker 1: so talk a little bit about this organization and how

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Speaker 1: it really gets money directly to the people who need it.

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Speaker 2: Well. Give Directly was the brainchild of some economists that

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Speaker 2: Harvard and MIT who began seeing all this data and thought, well,

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Speaker 2: why don't we try to see what would happen if

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Speaker 2: we just gave cash? And they started in Kenya and

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Speaker 2: they learned by doing. Initially, they took loans from their

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Speaker 2: parents and they started giving money and the results were

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Speaker 2: absolutely staggering, and it's grown since then very dramatically. Give

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Speaker 2: Directly was the fastest growing nonprofit in the world a

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Speaker 2: couple of years ago. It's funded by everything from large

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Speaker 2: donations to small donations, but its key ethos is recipients first.

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Speaker 2: In other words, every policy decision in the organization is

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Speaker 2: determined by what is in the best interests of recipients

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Speaker 2: and above all, how do you get the most money

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Speaker 2: to recipients with the least bureaucracy.

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Speaker 1: And so, as part of this Giving Tuesday episode, we're

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Speaker 1: asking Happiness Lab listeners to consider donating to a special

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Speaker 1: Give Directly campaign. This is a campaign that's going to

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Speaker 1: be giving money directly to people in Kebobo, which is

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Speaker 1: in the Kagali province of Rwanda. Tell me a little

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Speaker 1: bit about life in Kebobo and why Give Directly is

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Speaker 1: trying to do some campaign there.

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Speaker 2: Well, Kibobo, I think is a great place if people

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Speaker 2: want someone to support. It's a village. It's a village

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Speaker 2: with just over ninety households, a typical small village in Rwanda,

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Speaker 2: and people there are living in really desperate situation. They

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Speaker 2: lack almost everything, lack clean drinking water, so you will

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Speaker 2: see communities going down to a dirty river bed to

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Speaker 2: try to get their water, and of course that has

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Speaker 2: a huge health impact in terms of boraborn diseases. Many

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Speaker 2: of them lack decent shelter. The school is a long

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Speaker 2: way away, the clinics are a long way away. Getting

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Speaker 2: anywhere is difficult. Setting up a small business is difficult

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Speaker 2: because the road infrastructure just isn't there to support you.

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Speaker 2: So you're held back by public infrastructure. But you're also

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Speaker 2: held back primarily by the fact you don't have simple cash.

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Speaker 2: Getting a little bit of cash is what will allow

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Speaker 2: you to fix your house, buy a cow which could

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Speaker 2: have a calf, provide milk for your family, set up

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Speaker 2: a small tailoring business for a bakery, or just buy

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Speaker 2: a motorbike in order to get into town. Provide the

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Speaker 2: support to get your children's uniforms and textbooks into school,

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Speaker 2: get a relative who's ill to the local hospital, start

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Speaker 2: investing a little bit in your land, buying some seeds,

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Speaker 2: buying some fertilizer, these things that are genuinely life transforming.

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Speaker 2: It's one village, and if we were able to raise

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Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars through the Happiness Lab, that would

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Speaker 2: be enough to cover almost everybody in that community and

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Speaker 2: really transform their lives. And a small donation of fifty

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Speaker 2: one hundred dollars goes a very long way, because we're

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Speaker 2: looking for one thousand dollars per household that would cover

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Speaker 2: generally two adult individuals and a number of children. And yeah,

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Speaker 2: anything would go a very long way.

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Speaker 1: And with the caveat that, the whole point of giving

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Speaker 1: directly is that the people in Kobobo will get to

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Speaker 1: use the cash or whatever they want. What's the expectation

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Speaker 1: of the kinds of things they're going to use this

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Speaker 1: cash for.

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Speaker 2: The majority of people will invest in running electricity into

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Speaker 2: the community, fixing the roofs of their houses, getting livestock cows,

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Speaker 2: providing nutrition for their children, meals, investing in small businesses

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Speaker 2: in many cases, running clean water pipes into the community.

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Speaker 2: All these kind of things that addressing the basic needs,

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Speaker 2: which will be very different village to village, house to house.

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Speaker 2: But the great thing about cash is it's flexible.

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Speaker 1: And this is really powerful because it suggests that these

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Speaker 1: kinds of donations aren't just ones where you're adding to

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Speaker 1: some administrators hefty fees, Like the cash is really going

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Speaker 1: to go vieo mobile. I for want into people's pockets directly.

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00:23:05,756 --> 00:23:10,876
Speaker 2: Right right exactly. And that's the fundamental thing. We believe

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00:23:11,036 --> 00:23:15,116
Speaker 2: that individuals know better than anyone else what they need

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00:23:15,396 --> 00:23:17,476
Speaker 2: and how to spend that money. So if you think

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00:23:17,556 --> 00:23:20,916
Speaker 2: about a group of your friends or family, you, Laurie

440
00:23:20,996 --> 00:23:23,796
Speaker 2: might want to be setting up a small business because

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00:23:24,116 --> 00:23:26,956
Speaker 2: by some miracle, your kids already in school. I might

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00:23:27,076 --> 00:23:28,796
Speaker 2: not have my kid in school, so that might be

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00:23:28,836 --> 00:23:31,716
Speaker 2: my priority. My neighbor might already have a small business

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00:23:31,756 --> 00:23:33,316
Speaker 2: and a kid in school, but might have a very

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00:23:33,476 --> 00:23:36,596
Speaker 2: sick aunt. The person four dolls down might be blind,

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00:23:37,076 --> 00:23:39,196
Speaker 2: and what they would really need is someone to support

447
00:23:39,236 --> 00:23:42,036
Speaker 2: them in bringing water up to their house and getting

448
00:23:42,036 --> 00:23:44,476
Speaker 2: a decent front door. But what you can't do as

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00:23:44,516 --> 00:23:48,076
Speaker 2: an outsider is guess all these things from five thousand

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00:23:48,116 --> 00:23:51,236
Speaker 2: miles away. What the cash does is let the individuals

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00:23:51,276 --> 00:23:54,356
Speaker 2: in those communities address their own needs directly, and.

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Speaker 1: A lot of what we talk about on the Happiness

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00:23:55,836 --> 00:23:58,116
Speaker 1: Lab are the kind of benefits that come from doing

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00:23:58,116 --> 00:24:00,276
Speaker 1: these kind pro social acts, not just to the people

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00:24:00,276 --> 00:24:03,116
Speaker 1: who receive these donations, but to the people who are

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00:24:03,116 --> 00:24:06,076
Speaker 1: doing the donating. As you've worked with give directly and

457
00:24:06,196 --> 00:24:08,076
Speaker 1: kind of seen the impact of their work. Has this

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00:24:08,116 --> 00:24:10,116
Speaker 1: really changed your happy Do you think it can change

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00:24:10,116 --> 00:24:13,316
Speaker 1: the happiness of the people who are making these small donations.

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00:24:13,676 --> 00:24:16,716
Speaker 2: Absolutely? I mean, for me, visiting that village on there

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00:24:16,716 --> 00:24:21,036
Speaker 2: around a Brundi border, realizing that giving eleven hundred dollars

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00:24:21,076 --> 00:24:24,476
Speaker 2: could transform somebody's life was extraordinary. I mean it was

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00:24:24,516 --> 00:24:27,516
Speaker 2: a great gift to me, not to them, to feel

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00:24:27,556 --> 00:24:29,516
Speaker 2: that I was able to do some good in the

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00:24:29,556 --> 00:24:32,596
Speaker 2: world so simply and so straightforwardly. You know, the woman

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00:24:32,636 --> 00:24:34,756
Speaker 2: who I was supporting, I mean, in her house there

467
00:24:34,836 --> 00:24:38,436
Speaker 2: was only a single object, which was one metal pot.

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00:24:38,636 --> 00:24:40,916
Speaker 2: She didn't have a plastic bucket or a chair or

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00:24:40,956 --> 00:24:44,116
Speaker 2: a mattress or anything, and she was looking after three

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00:24:44,156 --> 00:24:48,196
Speaker 2: grandchildren on six dollars a month. And I think it's

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00:24:48,316 --> 00:24:52,716
Speaker 2: deeply fulfilling to be able to engage with supporting communities

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00:24:52,756 --> 00:24:54,436
Speaker 2: and I think give directly is also quite good at

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00:24:54,516 --> 00:24:57,316
Speaker 2: keeping you up to date on the progress those communities

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00:24:57,316 --> 00:24:59,156
Speaker 2: and making so that you can have a feeling of

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00:24:59,156 --> 00:25:00,516
Speaker 2: what the practical impact is.

476
00:25:00,796 --> 00:25:03,316
Speaker 1: But yet there's so much pushback about the possibility of

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00:25:03,356 --> 00:25:05,676
Speaker 1: just giving cash directly. I mean, is this something you

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00:25:05,796 --> 00:25:06,836
Speaker 1: find frustrating?

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00:25:07,156 --> 00:25:09,036
Speaker 2: How do you deal with it without being too geek

480
00:25:09,196 --> 00:25:11,596
Speaker 2: about it? I would say, follow the evidence, and the

481
00:25:11,636 --> 00:25:15,476
Speaker 2: evidence is that people put the money to better use

482
00:25:15,516 --> 00:25:17,396
Speaker 2: than almost anything else. When I say evidence, I mean

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00:25:17,476 --> 00:25:21,796
Speaker 2: really compelling randomized control trials like medical trials, where you're

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00:25:21,836 --> 00:25:25,676
Speaker 2: following thousands of people a random group over many years,

485
00:25:25,716 --> 00:25:27,796
Speaker 2: and what you find is, yes, a few individuals might

486
00:25:27,796 --> 00:25:30,956
Speaker 2: misuse money, but by and large, there is almost no

487
00:25:31,236 --> 00:25:34,876
Speaker 2: intervention in poverty which has the impact that cash has.

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00:25:35,116 --> 00:25:36,836
Speaker 2: And I know it's a difficult step. It was a

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00:25:36,836 --> 00:25:39,956
Speaker 2: difficult step for me when I was working international, but

490
00:25:39,996 --> 00:25:41,636
Speaker 2: I was just like, what are you talking about. I mean,

491
00:25:41,676 --> 00:25:45,156
Speaker 2: we've spent decades trying to come up with cunning plans

492
00:25:45,236 --> 00:25:48,196
Speaker 2: and building things for other people, and now you're saying

493
00:25:48,676 --> 00:25:50,756
Speaker 2: we'd be better off just giving them cash and stepping

494
00:25:50,756 --> 00:25:53,076
Speaker 2: out the way. I know, that's a very radical, difficult view,

495
00:25:53,076 --> 00:25:57,516
Speaker 2: but particularly in a world that's understandably worried about colonialism,

496
00:25:57,716 --> 00:26:01,956
Speaker 2: about patronizing development aid, this is the most radically respectful

497
00:26:01,956 --> 00:26:04,356
Speaker 2: thing you can do, because you're saying that people in

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00:26:04,396 --> 00:26:07,916
Speaker 2: extreme poverty no more care more, can do more than

499
00:26:07,956 --> 00:26:12,916
Speaker 2: I can. Expecting their dignity, You're giving them freedom of choice,

500
00:26:13,196 --> 00:26:16,076
Speaker 2: and you're trusting them to spend the money far better

501
00:26:16,116 --> 00:26:18,396
Speaker 2: than any outside it could do on their behalf.

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00:26:19,716 --> 00:26:22,476
Speaker 1: I hope this episode has convinced you that cash transfers

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00:26:22,516 --> 00:26:24,636
Speaker 1: are a great way to help people in need. But

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00:26:24,796 --> 00:26:27,596
Speaker 1: knowing about the effectiveness of giving directly is only the

505
00:26:27,636 --> 00:26:30,636
Speaker 1: first step to really see the power of cash transfer.

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00:26:31,036 --> 00:26:34,996
Speaker 1: Nonprofits like GiveDirectly need that cash to transfer. So this

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00:26:35,116 --> 00:26:37,836
Speaker 1: Giving Tuesday, why don't you join me and other Happiness

508
00:26:37,916 --> 00:26:40,996
Speaker 1: Lab listeners to help the people of Cabobo. Last year,

509
00:26:41,036 --> 00:26:43,436
Speaker 1: our listeners raised a lot of money for people in need,

510
00:26:43,956 --> 00:26:46,436
Speaker 1: but this year we might be able to completely lift

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00:26:46,476 --> 00:26:49,716
Speaker 1: an entire village out of extreme poverty. So head right

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00:26:49,756 --> 00:26:54,076
Speaker 1: now to give directly dot org slash happiness. That's give

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00:26:54,156 --> 00:26:58,116
Speaker 1: directly dot org slash happiness and give what you can,

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00:26:58,676 --> 00:27:01,156
Speaker 1: even if it's just a couple of bucks. As we

515
00:27:01,196 --> 00:27:03,556
Speaker 1: heard in this episode that three dollars that you might

516
00:27:03,636 --> 00:27:05,876
Speaker 1: waste on a cup of coffee may be able to

517
00:27:05,916 --> 00:27:07,996
Speaker 1: do a lot more good when you give it directly,

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00:27:08,556 --> 00:27:11,196
Speaker 1: both for the people in need and for your own

519
00:27:11,276 --> 00:27:15,476
Speaker 1: sense of happiness and purpose. That website again is GiveDirectly

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00:27:15,756 --> 00:27:28,036
Speaker 1: dot org slash happiness. The Happiness Lab is co written

521
00:27:28,036 --> 00:27:31,236
Speaker 1: and produced by Ryan Dilley. Our original music was composed

522
00:27:31,276 --> 00:27:34,796
Speaker 1: by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by

523
00:27:34,836 --> 00:27:39,196
Speaker 1: Evan Viola. Jess Shane and Alice Fines offered additional production support.

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00:27:39,636 --> 00:27:42,036
Speaker 1: Special thanks to my agent, Ben Davis and all of

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00:27:42,036 --> 00:27:44,396
Speaker 1: the Pushkin crew. The Happiness Lab is brought to you

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00:27:44,476 --> 00:27:53,276
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Larrie Santos