Are the world's poor leading ever improving lives?

We have seen several pieces of evidence this year that, contrary to popular belief and even contrary to some aggregate GDP statistics, the lives of the global poor - with some notable exceptions - seems to be improving significantly. Here is more evidence to that effect - despite the huge increase in the global population and the rise of HIV, maternal deaths have fallen to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980. Besides the obvious good news (and, indirectly, the implication about the effectiveness of certain policies), the other striking point of this article was how some groups actually try to suppress favourable information about good development outcomes. What do you think? Is this justified on the grounds that good news might make people relax?

Big Banks Draw Profits From Microloans to Poor

Those of you following developments in microfinance might find this article from today's New York Times interesting. The article raises a number of troubling concerns about some microfinance programmes - but should the main concern be that banks might make a profit off of poor people? What is really the problem here? Can behavioural economics shed light on some possible solutions?

New Database on Aid Flows

AidData.org is a new online data resource on foreign aid:

The web platform links to a query-able database that contains almost 1 million development finance transfers from governments to recipients in developing countries or from international organizations to recipients in developing countries. It does not track FDI, trade, military assistance, or aid flows that originate from private foundations.

The database includes $4.2 trillion in development finance from 87 donors since 1945, and it lists nearly one million project records. AidData includes the official OECD information, but it also adds loans and grants from development banks and donors who do not report to the OECD. AidData provides much more descriptive detail on many of the largest projects, and it uses a categorization system that allows for much finer-grained coding.