No Lean Season, a program based on research by Yale’s Mushfiq Mobarak that encourages seasonal migration in some of the world’s poorest rural communities, has been named to the list of Top Charities recommended by GiveWell, a nonprofit that evaluates the impact of philanthropic organizations.
No Lean Season provides a small subsidy—enough money for a round-trip bus ticket and a meal—to villagers in order to encourage them to seek work in the city during the lean season between planting and harvest, when many communities face severe hardship. Studies conducted by a team led by Mobarak, a professor of economics at the Yale School of Management and in the Yale Department of Economics, found that these subsidies increase the rate of migration and result in increases in household income and calories consumed in the home village. The program is being scaled up by the organization Evidence Action in order to reach hundreds of thousands of households.
