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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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 Michael Clemens is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development where he leads the Migration and Development initiative. Full Bio Follow @m_clem
Showing posts on the Views from the Center blog. View author posts on: Africa’s Child Health Miracle: The Biggest, Best Story in DevelopmentMay 4, 2012By Michael Clemens in Africa, Global Health Tags: Africa
If you’re sick of the sad, hopeless stories coming out of Africa, here’s one that made my year. New statistics show that the rate of child death across sub-Saharan Africa is not just in decline—but that decline has massively accelerated, just in the last few years. From the middle to the end of the last decade, rates of child mortality across the continent plummeted much faster than they ever had before. 7 Comments »Two Conflicting Visions of Rural Development in Uganda, One Inspiring SpeechApril 18, 2012By Michael Clemens in Africa, Poverty, Rural Development Tags: Africa, Poverty, Rural Development
How can the rural poor of Uganda achieve lasting opportunity, health, and security? One vision for this goal is the laudable enterprise of external charity, such as the efforts in Uganda encouraged by U.S. celebrities Tommy Hilfiger and Katie Holmes or the controversial work of Invisible Children. 3 Comments »Does the World Bank Board Have the Authority to Choose Jim Yong Kim as President?April 11, 2012By Michael Clemens in International Financial Institutions, World Bank Tags: International Financial Institutions, World Bank
In a few days, the board of the World Bank will choose a new president. There are three candidates: an American physician and anthropologist (Jim Yong Kim), a Colombian economist (José Antonio Ocampo), and a Nigerian economist (Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala). All 12 presidents in the 66-year history of the World Bank have been American. 10 Comments »Up Next: An Unprecedented Public Split on Drug Policy at the Summit of the Americas?April 10, 2012By Michael Clemens in Latin America Tags: drugs, Summit of the Americas
This weekend, leaders of the entire Western Hemisphere will gather in Colombia to discuss cooperation for development, including legal cooperation. Something new and remarkable this year is how far apart the leaders have grown—openly this time—on drug decriminalization. It’s an issue with potentially huge implications for development. 1 Comment »New Documents Reveal the Cost of “Ending Poverty” in a Millennium Village: At Least $12,000 Per HouseholdMarch 30, 2012By Michael Clemens in Africa, Evaluation, Poverty Tags: Africa, Evaluation, Millennium Villages
Documents recently made public by the UK government reveal the cost of poverty reduction in the Millennium Villages Project, a self-described “solution to extreme poverty” in African villages created by Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs. The project costs at least US$12,000 per household that it lifts from poverty—about 34 times the annual incomes of those households. This highlights once again the importance of independent and transparent evaluation of development projects. Read More… 7 Comments »What Is Not Owned Cannot Be Stolen: Stop Dehumanizing African Health WorkersMarch 12, 2012By Michael Clemens in Migration and Labor Mobility Tags: Migration
I was sad and disgusted last week to see the highly-respected New York Times declare that “America is stealing the world’s doctors”. That article approvingly cites a horrific proposal to put recruiters of health workers on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity. This is breathtakingly misguided. Recruiters do not ‘steal’ people. They give information to people about jobs those people are qualified for. The professional ambitions of those people have equal value to yours and mine, and those ambitions cannot be realized without information. International recruiters allow African health workers the chance to earn ten to twenty times what they could make at home. In other words, recruiters allow them access to professional opportunities that people like me and Times journalist Matt McAllester take for granted by luck of birthright citizenship. 11 Comments »Do Farm Workers from Developing Countries Take Jobs from Americans?February 28, 2012By Michael Clemens in Global Development, Migration Tags: Guest Workers, Migration
I spent last Friday in rural North Carolina, talking with American farmers who employ farmworkers from developing countries. I wanted to get the hard facts on whether or not those workers displace U.S. citizen labor. I spoke with the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), the largest employer of documented temporary farm labor from poor countries under the H-2A visa program. Many of the members have been farming that beautiful countryside for generations—producing peaches, mushrooms, yams, tobacco, blueberries, and Christmas trees. I asked them how easy it was to find U.S. citizens to fill their manual agricultural jobs. I was struck mute by what I heard. I’ll let the numbers talk. 8 Comments »Does the U.S. Need and Want Low-Skill Haitian Workers? Yes: Just Look AroundFebruary 21, 2012By Michael Clemens in Economic Development, Migration and Disaster Recovery, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags: Haiti, Migration and Disaster Recovery
Last month, a CGD initiative succeeded in getting Haitians access to America’s largest temporary work visa program. Access to this visa has the potential to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars of new income—at no cost to the United States—for Haitian families still coping with a catastrophic earthquake and the world’s worst cholera epidemic. It is a double win for the U.S., which got access to more energetic young workers to fill very basic jobs, and for struggling Haiti. This small step, says Claire Provost of The Guardian’s Poverty Matters, could open “a fresh development frontier”. 6 Comments »Birth of Immigration Fiction: Watch a UK Minister Create an Economic Myth about Migration from Developing CountriesFebruary 7, 2012By Michael Clemens in Migration and Development Tags: Immigration, Migration and Development
Some myths leave us to wonder who dreamed them up. Other myths we can observe as they are born. Last week a UK minister created an economic myth about immigration to his country, and it’s useful to watch how and why it arose. First the fact: In January, an expert research team called the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) released a rigorous review of the economic effects of immigration to the UK. The MAC found no association between UK unemployment and immigration to the UK from outside the EU, over the whole period 1975-2010. But when they separated out the last 15 years of that period, 1995-2010, the MAC found that there was a positive association between unemployment and immigration from developing countries in particular. During those years, for every 100 working-age non-EU immigrants who arrived in a particular UK region in a particular year, 23 fewer UK natives were employed in that region in that year. 12 Comments »CGD Movie Event Jan. 23: Hope for Bipartisan Steps toward Sensible Regulation of Migration?January 20, 2012By Michael Clemens in Immigration Tags: On the Hill
Washington’s partisan deadlock has drained the hopes of many who seek action on the challenges America faces. But even on one of the most toxic political issues—migration—there is room for hope. One sign of hope for bipartisan cooperation came earlier this week, when the administration added Haiti to the list of countries eligible for H-2 visas, America’s largest temporary work visa program, a move backed by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators and representatives from Florida. Comment »Why I’m Thrilled the United States Has Stopped Excluding Haitians from Temporary Work VisasJanuary 19, 2012By Michael Clemens in Migration and Disaster Recovery Tags: Haiti, On the Hill
I’m delighted to share the news that yesterday the U.S. government added Haiti to the list of more than 50 countries eligible to participate in the H-2 visa program for temporary and seasonal workers, ending a longstanding policy of excluding Haitians from America’s largest temporary employment-based visa program. This is wonderful news for Haitians and Americans. It has the potential to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in new economic opportunity for Haitian workers and their families—at no cost to the U.S. or Haitian governments, and with no increase in overall U.S. immigration. It’s also a fine example of the power of research-based policy engagement to help foster shared global prosperity. 13 Comments »Two Years after Haiti’s Catastrophe, It’s Time to Complement Aid with the Most Cost-Effective Assistance: MigrationJanuary 9, 2012By Michael Clemens in Global Development, Migration and Development, Migration and Disaster Recovery Tags: Haiti
Two years ago this Thursday, at least 150,000 people died one evening in Haiti. As a fraction of the national population, the U.S. equivalent would be the instant death of the entire state of South Carolina. Those Haitians died mostly because they lived in a poor country. Forget the comforting notion that an earthquake, pure and simple, killed them. The same ground movement can only cause dozens of deaths in a country with the wealth and institutions to erect proper buildings. One of the principal causes of their deaths was where they were. 1 Comment »Celebrating America’s Long-Term Strength, Not Its Impending Death, on International Migrants DayDecember 12, 2011By Michael Clemens in Migration and Development Tags: Immigration, Migration and Development
December 18th will be International Migrants Day. I’m delighted, because continued migration flows across the globe will add trillions of dollars to the beleaguered world economy. You’re not planning a big party on the 18th, you say? Neither are the various pressure groups working hard to slow or stop migration to the United States and Europe—outfits like NumbersUSA, FAIR, the Center for Immigration Studies, the British National Party, or France’s Front National. Comment »No, British Medical Journal, the Emigration of African Doctors Did Not Cost Africa $2 BillionNovember 30, 2011By Michael Clemens in Africa, Migration Tags: Africa, Migration
Last week the respected British Medical Journal published a back-of-the-envelope calculation by Mills et al. suggesting that the emigration of physicians from Africa cost the continent billions of dollars and saved billions for the countries of destination. I share and appreciate the authors’ concern for strengthening health care systems in Africa. But the numbers they calculate are deeply flawed, and their unfortunate arithmetic should be ignored by policymakers. Mills et al. simply add up the number of African medical graduates living in other countries, multiply by the cost of those Africans’ primary, secondary, and tertiary (medical) education, and—voilà—they arrive at the “financial cost of doctors emigrating from sub-Saharan Africa.” They go on to estimate the “savings” to the destination countries as the amount that it would have cost to train those African doctors in the country of destination. 5 Comments »Kenyan Economist Offers First Independent Evaluation of Millennium Villages ProjectNovember 28, 2011By Michael Clemens in Evaluation Tags: Evaluation, Millennium Villages
A remarkable study reached the public last week. It is the first independent, rigorous, firsthand evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an effort by the United Nations and Columbia University whose admirable goal was to show that “the poorest regions of rural Africa can lift themselves out of extreme poverty in five year’s time.” The new study shows that the MVP is far from reaching that goal at its flagship site. 27 Comments »The Millennium Villages Evaluation Debate Heats Up, Boils OverOctober 21, 2011By Michael Clemens in Evaluation Tags: Evaluation, Millennium Villages
The Millennium Villages Project, now underway in villages across Africa, is a keystone of United Nations efforts against global poverty. For years there has been a largely behind-the-scenes debate about how that project is evaluating its impacts. In the past week that debate suddenly heated up. A lot. 21 Comments »We Join the Data Transparency Movement: CGD’s New Research Data Disclosure PolicyOctober 3, 2011By Michael Clemens in Global Development Tags: Data Transparency
If a researcher wants to call her work science, others must be able to reproduce her results. This “replicability” is at the core of scientific inquiry. Replicability is what turns one person’s experience into a resource for humanity, what moves an anecdote toward a fact. But much new social and economic research—based on the recent explosion of digital data collection—cannot be reproduced because the necessary data are not available to other researchers. The more researchers can provide open access to the data and computer code needed for replication of their results, the more their work can aspire to the label of social science. Read More… Comment »A New Kind of Overseas Charity Is BornSeptember 30, 2011By Michael Clemens in Global Development Tags: cash transfers
I was struck by the advent of a new form of overseas charitable giving. GiveDirectly, which opened this summer, allows anyone on earth to directly wire money to the poorest of the poor. The transfers go to very low-income Africans over mobile phones, which have become suddenly ubiquitous across the continent. The transfers are targeted to people very likely to be extremely poor, and almost all the donor’s money goes right into the recipient’s pocket. Read More… 8 Comments »Do the Gains from International Migration “Go to the Immigrants”?September 23, 2011By Michael Clemens in Migration Tags: Migration, Migration and Development
This morning, Justin Rowlatt of BBC World Service asked me a smart interview question: Sure, there are economic gains to migration, but don’t most of those gains simply go to the migrants? We were discussing a new paper of mine on the global economic gains to international labor mobility. The latest and best economic research shows that the gains from even small reductions in worldwide barriers to migration would add trillions of dollars a year to the weakened global economy. That’s more than the world would gain from the total removal of all remaining policy barriers to trade and every last barrier to capital movement. 2 Comments »Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk: Why Don’t More Economists Study Emigration?September 6, 2011By Michael Clemens in Migration and Development Tags: Migration and Development
Economists who study globalization pay lots of attention to trade and capital flows. They have spent generations researching how much better off the world could be if there were fewer international obstacles to voluntary, mutually beneficial trade and investment. If there’s a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk—economists’ old catch-phrase meaning an opportunity for big gain at small cost—why not pick it up? 2 Comments » |
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