Poverty project opens to scrutiny

Abstract

The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) a joint venture between Columbia University and the non-profit organization Millennium Promise is simultaneously applying a raft of aid interventions – from bednets for malaria control to fertilizers – to help impoverished villages to meet the United Nation’s eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) including reducing hunger extreme poverty and the burden of major diseases. In a paper published online in The Lancet the project claimed a significant milestone: it reported that after three years of interventions child mortality was decreasing three times faster in the project’s villages than in the host nations in general. But the analysis was criticized for underestimating improvements in child mortality and overestimating those in the Millennium Villages. As a result the paper was partially retracted and MVP’s founder Jeffrey Sachs has now created a faculty committee to oversee MVP research and increase interactions with outside researchers. Whether the MVP ultimately proves a success or failure it will still provide useful information so it is important to improve its evaluation mechanisms.