Big Bag o Blog Links

Facebookistan: the third largest country.

The power of barter: how a teenager turned a beat up cell phone into a Porsche.

Mobile banking for the unbanked - how Kenyan banks and microcredit orgs use mobile banking.

An unidentified LDS bishop in Africa decided he would follow one of the church's programs for youth to experience what it was like. He asked one of the youth verify that he had successfully completed his project similar to how her parents would sign off on hers.

He shared with her the things he had learned and done and then she asked to see his journal entry regarding this experience because that was part of the requirement. He replied, "Well, I did not write about this in my journal. I don't have one." The young woman replied, "Well then Bishop, I cannot sign your Personal Progress book. Come back when you have completed all the requirements." He said that he had learned a great lesson.

A World Bank RCT on AIDS and poverty in Malawi

found that if poor schoolgirls and their families received small monthly cash payments, the girls had sex later, less often and with fewer partners. A year and a half after the program started, the girls were less than half as likely to be infected with the AIDS or herpes viruses than were girls whose families got no payments. The likelihood that the girls would agree to sex in return for gifts and cash declined as the size of the payments from the program rose, suggesting the central role of extreme poverty in sexual choices. ...“The program empowered these girls to make better choices,” said Berk Ozler, a senior economist with the World Bank’s Development Research Group.

Half the girls received no cash payments. The parents of the other half were paid $4 to $10 a month while the girls themselves received $1 to $5 a month if they attended school regularly.

Hat tip: Poverty News Blog.

Meanwhile, Blattman tells us there is something not worth reading. I am thankful for one more data point to support my biases: "I also got talked into reading Wicked. ... I just can’t shake the feeling I’ve lost six hours of my life I will never get back."

Oh, and "I, Pencil" meets iPad.