As a reminder that we live in an age of amazing wonders, this link roundup is being written at 35,000 feet. However, any errors in the below commentary should be taken as a reminder that the internet at 35,000 ft kinda sucks.
Reminder: In Development has an open call for pitches!
Yes, this will be the first item on this list of links every week until it closes.
Andrew Gerard (of Macroscience) wrote up a list of pieces he would like to see in In Development, and I endorse all these ideas. If you are the right person to write any of these, please reach out to submissions@indevelopmentmag.com.
Charles Kenny and Justin Sandefur re-estimate the number of deaths that are likely to have resulted from the end of USAID. They think 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths are likely to have resulted.
This ProPublica piece describes what some of those cuts have meant on the ground at refugee camps.
Last week, the UK introduced major planning reforms. Ben Southwood, Benedict Springbett, Samuel Hughes, and Harry Rushworth argue we should add more Crossrails to improve infrastructure for new housing.
Laurenz Guenther wrote on bias on immigration research.
tbh my takeaway on the garden of forking paths section here was not that social scientists are ideologically biased but that sociologists shouldn’t be allowed to do causal inference.
Tim Hirschel-Burns writes about the Green Card Lottery, and what Noem’s “pause” means.
He also has an excellent piece on the Marshall Plan. In 1949, the Marshall Plan was 12% of the federal budget!1
Ending extreme poverty would cost 0.3% of world GDP. For comparison, the alcohol industry is 2.2% of world GDP.
Individuals are willing to forgo 12-36% of their income to avoid a hostile work environment. As I watch women around me navigate tech workplaces, I am reminded of this every day…
It would take around 30 years for the typical Londoner to save for a house deposit.
France and the UK are still some of the largest all-time recipients of US foreign aid because of the Marshall Plan.
Strrong curation here. That 12% budget share for the Marshall Plan really puts todays foreign aid debates in perspective. Back when we actualy rebuilt economies, we didnt treat it as a marginal line item but as core national strategy. When I think about how we allocate resources now, its wild that ending extreme poverty would cost roughly 0.3% of global GDP yet we struggle to mobilize even that.