The Challenge of World Poverty
Writing Advice
- Introduction (PDF)
- What is a poverty trap? (PDF)
- Social experiments: Why and how? (PDF - 2.7MB)
- Is there a nutrition-based poverty trap? (PDF - 1.2MB)
- The hidden traps (PDF)
- Health: Low hanging fruit (PDF)
- Education: Setting the stage (PDF)
- Is it possible to deliver quality education to the poor: The Pratham-JPAL Partnership (PDF)
- Education: The man made trap (PDF)
- (Somewhat) un-orthodox findings on the family (PDF)
- How do families decide? (PDF - 1.1MB)
- Gender discrimination (PDF)
- Risk and insurance (PDF)
- Insurance (PDF)
- The (not so simple) economics of lending to the poor (PDF)
- The promise and perils of microfinance (PDF)
- Savings (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
- Savings 2 (PDF)
- Entrepreneurs and workers (PDF)
- Policies, politics: Can evidence play a role in the fight against poverty? (PDF)
- Policies, politics: Can evidence play a role in the fight against poverty? (PDF - 1.3MB) (cont.)
- Five thoughts in place of a sweeping conclusion (PDF)
- Lecture 1: Introduction
- Lecture 2: What is a Poverty Trap?
- Lecture 3: Social Experiments: Why and How?
- Lecture 5: Is There a Nutrition-Based Poverty Trap?
- Lecture 6: Nutrition: The Hidden Traps
- Lecture 8: Health: Low Hanging Fruit?
- Lecture 9: Education: Setting the Stage
- Lecture 10: Is It Possible to Deliver Quality Education to the Poor-The Pratham-JPAL Partnership
- Lecture 11: Education: The Man Made Trap
- Lecture 12: (Somewhat) Un-Orthodox Findings on the Family
- Lecture 13: How Do Families Decide?
- Lecture 14: Gender Discrimination
- Lecture 15: Risk and Insurance
- Lecture 16: Insurance
- Lecture 17: The (Not So Simple) Economics of Lending to the Poor
- Lecture 19: The Promise and Perils of Microfinance
- Lecture 20: Savings
- Lecture 21: Savings 2
- Lecture 22: Entrepreneurs and Workers
- Lecture 24: Policies, Politics: Can Evidence Play a Role in the Fight Against Poverty?
- Lecture 25: Policies, Politics: Can Evidence Play a Role in the Fight Against Poverty?, cont.
- Lecture 26: Five Thoughts in Place of a Sweeping Conclusion
- Outline your paper before you start to write. A handful of writers can just sit down and write well from a blank page, but this technique works for very few. If you start typing stream-of-consciousness thoughts, your paper will read as though you typed stream-of-consciousness thoughts. This is not good.
- If you get "blank page syndrome" when putting together an outline, consider the following technique to get yourself started. Open up a blank file and just begin writing about your idea. I know I just said not to do this, but hear me out. Let all your thoughts flow out. Don't stop to rephrase, edit, or even rethink something that you realized doesn't make sense. You'll do this all later. When you feel that all your big ideas, no matter how rough, have made their way to the page, stop. Take a break. Do something else for a while. Then sit down and read the stuff you just rambled out. Now, put an outline together. Think about how to organize your ideas. Marshal your evidence and reasons. Once you have an outline that works, begin writing your paper.
- I sometimes have trouble beginning even the ramble. To overcome this, I start by typing something like, "I have no idea what I'm going to say about foreign aid. I chose to write about this topic because I'm interested in …" By this point, I'm already started and the ideas come on their own. It doesn't work for everyone, but it's worth a shot.
- State your thesis and outline your argument up front. Academic writing is not joke-telling or novel writing. In a joke, you lead people on a fun ride to a surprise ending. The only thing that should surprise readers of an academic paper is just how clearly you supported the thesis you told them about in your first paragraph. Though less focused on evidence, newspaper articles are a good model. The gist of a well-written article should be clear to the reader after reading two sentences; the rest is details. For you mathematicians, think about writing a proof. State your theorem and then prove it step-by-step with no extraneous lemmas or digressions.
- Do not take your readers on a guided tour of your path to epiphany. You may have seen the truth revealed while watching a hot dog vendor in the Commons. We don't need (or want) to know this.
- Print out your paper and read it through at least once before turning it in. I'm reluctant to encourage you to kill another tree, but I know of no one who is as good at catching typos or convoluted logic on the computer screen as on the printed page.
- Use other writing resources. Take one of your short papers for this class or another to the Writing Center and get some specific advice. Buy a good style guide and use it. I like Diana Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual. Some people swear by her A Writer's Reference. Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is a standard, but it may induce high school flashbacks. Whichever you pick, you'll be surprised by how much proper punctuation, grammar and mechanics can improve the readability of your work.
- Thinking longer term, take a writing class or buy and read a good book about writing well. For economists, McCloskey's Economical Writing is a good option.
- Whatever you choose to do with your life, you will do it better if you can communicate well.