Paul Niehaus, co-founder of GiveDirectly and an economics faculty member at University of California San Diego, will receive the 2026 during an April 24 event hosted by the at the University of Notre Dame.
The Ford Award and Lecture brings together scholars, practitioners and benefactors to engage with questions of poverty, human dignity and development practice. Niehaus will give a lecture on his experiences as co-founder of the聽 nonprofit organization, its role in facilitating direct cash transfers in anti-poverty work and key research findings that can inform international development.
鈥淧aul Niehaus exemplifies the kind of scholarship and impact we seek to recognize with this award,鈥� said Ford Program Director Patrizio Piraino. 鈥淗is work combines rigorous research with a deep respect for human dignity, challenging conventional approaches to poverty alleviation while empowering individuals to make their own economic decisions.鈥�
This alignment of research and impact is central to the , a University-wide effort to create a world intolerant of poverty by expanding knowledge about how to solve it. The University is deploying unprecedented resources, a wide range of research approaches and some of our brightest minds to better understand what causes poverty and how to end it.
The GiveDirectly mission, Niehaus said, is rooted in a respect for people鈥檚 agency and autonomy when delivering aid. Since 2009, direct cash payments have gone to at least 2 million people living in African nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in the United States.
鈥淕iveDirectly has grown from a crazy idea that people thought would never work to over $1 billion now distributed,鈥� said Niehaus, who welcomes the Ford Program recognition and the opportunity to share data from some two dozen rigorous studies on direct cash transfer. They include a聽, co-authored by Niehaus, that demonstrates how just 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent of global GDP is needed to effectively end extreme poverty 鈥� everywhere.
The numbers fall within a range that about 60 percent of 鈥渞ich world鈥� survey respondents would give up if it were to end global poverty, according to separate research on direct cash transfer by Nobel Prize recipients Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, as well as economist Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago.
Niehaus finds these results encouraging, even as research on direct giving continues at a national scale in places like Rwanda and Malawi. 鈥淲e're asking the question, if you come in and give people one-time wealth transfers, what does that get you?鈥� he explained.
The impact can vary based on a range of variables. Among them are how larger amounts compare with smaller universal basic income-like payments over time, how demographics like age affect preferences and specific goals the cash support is meant to help people achieve.
Those goals are self-directed and articulated by the people themselves, Niehaus said, with GiveDirectly data showing that about $1,000 U.S. dollars, given in a lump sum, translates in a year or so to improved income and assets, health outcomes and community life.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of diversity within an ethical worldview,鈥� Niehaus said, with many donors looking for market efficiencies and quantitative data to support the direct cash approach. Others may place more focus on anti-poverty work itself, or on a limited scope like coffee and specific crops.
Program success is achieved through tech-driven tools for both facilitating donor gifts and managing individual digital accounts in places like Kenya. Niehaus says the model essentially works everywhere, although security challenges can limit operations in some communities.
Yet there鈥檚 no one-size-fits-all answer, and research helps the GiveDirectly team to see the ethical implications of how they define and assess poverty, as well as how aid works in the real world. Niehaus says he increasingly spends time helping younger academics to refine their thinking on how to make a difference while designing research approaches.
鈥淩esearch helps us to find out what matters to people,鈥� Niehaus added. He looks forward to sharing some of those same insights during the Ford Program lecture.
Founded in 2008 with a gift from the family of University of Notre Dame Trustee W. Douglas Ford, the Ford Program in Human Development 91视频 and Solidarity, part of the in the at the University of Notre Dame, promotes Integral Human Development through community-engaged research, teaching and service aimed at understanding and addressing the challenges of extreme poverty while fostering human dignity and flourishing.
Originally published by the Kellogg Institute at on April 20.
Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu