This following text is for questions 74 to 76.
 

    Two other recent studies, conducted in sub-Saharan Africa by field researchers working with scholars of behavioral science in the United States and England, also tested antipoverty strategies and found in each case that conventional instincts about what would work were wrong. (These collaborations were organized by our nonprofit, Innovations for Poverty Action, which has overseen more than 500 such evaluation in 51 countries.

    The first study took place in Uganda. As is the case in may poor countries, even when children in Uganda can go to school, they often lack the money for basic school supplies, which can limit their learning. Research has shown that "commitment devices," which keep savings out of reach until a date or savings goal is reached, can be effective in helping people save. So one of us, Professor Karlan, along with the University of Texas economist Leigh Linden, col l a borated with two education organizations in Uganda to find out if commitment devices could help students save for school suppl es - and if so, how best to design the commitment strategy.

    Public primary school students were given the chance to deposit money weekly into a lockbox, and they were informed that their accumulated savings would be returned to them at a school-supplies fair at the beginning of the next trimester. Schools were ra ndomly assigned to one of t h ree groups. In the first group, students were offered a "hard" commitment: Their accumulated savings would be returned in the form of a voucher that had to be spent on school supplies. In the second group, students got a "soft" commitment: Their savings would be returned in cash, and could be spent as they wished. The third group of schools continued as normal, serving as a comparison group whose savings and spending money were also observed.

    You might think that the "hard" commitment would be the best strategy, since it forces the money to be spent on school supplies. But surprisingly, as we report in a working paper, the soft commitment worked better. Students who got their savi ngs back in cash saved more, and when the program was combined with parental involvement (which was also randomized ), the students also bought more school supplies and achieved higher test scores.

    The second study took place in Zambia. One problem there, as in other low-income countries, is how to recruit the "right" kind of workers for jobs like teachers and health workers - where "right" refers to those who are capable and genuinely interested in helping the community, not just looking for money and a steppingstone to another job. There is often resistance to increasing what these jobs pay, or otherwise improving their benefits, for fear of attracting opportunists.

Adopted from: http://www.nytimes.com

What is the purpose of the text?