\u201c…go-getters\u201d\u009d also outperformed the \u201cdo-gooders\u201d\u009d on the job, seeing the same number of patients in their health clinics while conducting 29 percent more home visits and twice as many community health meetings. (After being recruited, everyone was told about the opportunities for career advancement, so that no differences in performance could be attributed to differing incentives.)<\/p>\n
More important, updated data show that communities served by the \u201cgo-getters\u201d\u009d are doing better on key health benchmarks such as facility-based childbirth, breast-feeding, vaccinations and nutrition. Based on these findings, the Zambian government changed its recruitment advertising as it looks to expand its health-worker program.<\/p>\n
These two insights \u201d\u201d committing to cash savings, recruiting \u201cgo-getters\u201d\u009d for community service jobs \u201d\u201d are just the tip of the iceberg. We have found that pairing experts in behavioral science with \u201con the ground\u201d\u009d teams of researchers and field workers has yielded many good ideas about how to address the problems of poverty. Hope and rhetoric are great for motivation, but not for figuring out what to do. There you need data.<\/p>\n