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Given the /where/ this money is being sent, how well does 1000 USD spend in Kenya? That is, what would it cost to buy someone in the US that same result? Edit

by mjevans 10y ago

Given the /where/ this money is being sent, how well does 1000 USD spend in Kenya? That is, what would it cost to buy someone in the US that same result? Edit: I missed the 'quarterly' part of the education cost. I think I'll compare the 50-70 USD per 3mo (~230/year) education cost of a student to one from the USA. According to a census website post one of the less expensive schools spent about 7000 per student / year. ( http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-98.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-98.h... ) Roughly calculating, that's about a 30x difference in cost of living. So it'd be a lot more like unconditionally giving a poor US family 30K. If this is a one time infusion, it isn't BIG, but close enough to it to break negative feedback loops.

T2_t2 10y ago
> That is, what would it cost to buy someone in the US that same result? That's really hard to compare, because very few people in the first world don't have a working roof (https://www.givedirectly.org/operating-model https://www.givedirectly.org/operating-model: We target households using criteria that vary by region—including aggregating a range of factors or looking at housing materials & https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=2845341784910255488 https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=2845341784910...). Lets use the figures from the operating model page: "The average recipient in Kenya lives on just 65 cents (nominal) per day" - so a cash injection of $1,000 is 1,538 days @ $0.065 - or about 4 years. If it is a family of four, $1,000 is a year's worth of expenses for the whole family. That's probably a fair measure of what this represents - a year's salary for a family of four. As a cash injection, it also allows for large purchases, e.g. to spend a few hundred on a roof. So each payment is the equivalent in the US of enough cash to buy, say, a car?

by mjevans 10y ago

T2_t2 10y ago

> That is, what would it cost to buy someone in the US that same result? That's really hard to compare, because very few people in the first world don't have a working roof (https://www.givedirectly.org/operating-model https://www.givedirectly.org/operating-model: We target households using criteria that vary by region—including aggregating a range of factors or looking at housing materials & https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=2845341784910255488 https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post.html?id=2845341784910...). Lets use the figures from the operating model page: "The average recipient in Kenya lives on just 65 cents (nominal) per day" - so a cash injection of $1,000 is 1,538 days @ $0.065 - or about 4 years. If it is a family of four, $1,000 is a year's worth of expenses for the whole family. That's probably a fair measure of what this represents - a year's salary for a family of four. As a cash injection, it also allows for large purchases, e.g. to spend a few hundred on a roof. So each payment is the equivalent in the US of enough cash to buy, say, a car?