What are the best ways to help the poor in developing countries?

Answering that question is not as straightforward as you might assume, says development economist Bruce Wydick in Christianity Today. As Wydick notes, most relief and development organizations carry out self-assessments and measure impact based on self-studies, methods that are neither unbiased nor empirically rigorous.

So to get a better answer to the question Wydick polled ten other top development economists. He asked them to rate, from 0 to 10, some of the mon poverty interventions to which ordinary people donate their money, in terms of impact and cost-effectiveness per donated dollar. Although Wydick gives a more detailed explanation of the results in his article, the following is a list of their ranking:

1. Get clean water to rural villages (Rating: 8.3)

2. Fund de-worming treatments for children (Rating: 7.8)

3. Provide mosquito nets (Rating: 7.3)

4. Sponsor a child (Rating: 6.9)

5. Give wood-burning stoves (Rating: 6.0)

6. Give a micro-finance loan (Rating: 4.2)

7. Fund reparative surgeries (Rating: 3.9)

8. Donate a farm animal (Rating: 3.8)

9. Drink fair-trade coffee (Rating: 1.9)

10. Give a kid a laptop (Rating: 1.8)

One of the key takeaways, says Wydick, is that the list “suggests little relationship (perhaps even a negative one) between marketing hype and program effectiveness.”

In other words, drinking fair-trade coffee and giving laptops to the poor may make Westerners feel better about themselves, but the most effective acts passion are still providing the simple things—like clean water and mosquito nets—that allow people in extreme poverty to lead a healthier life.