Key criteria for a Social Policy Bond regime

We're a long way from the days of John Snow, who successfully traced the origin of a serious health problem - a cholera outbreak in London - to a single public water pump. Many of today's most urgent social and environmental problems have multiple causes and are beset by time lags, which makes it difficult to identify how best to solve them. One example: childhood obesity; it's just not amenable to the sort of painstaking analysis done by a single person, however brilliant. Policy today is generally a top-down, one-size-fits-all business, heavily influenced by powerful interest groups, within and outside government. As such, it is, in my view, incapable of dealing with our complex social problems effectively. A Social Policy Bond regime is my suggested way of encouraging people to research, experiment and refine the (most probably) multiple approaches to solving our problems. So: complexity is one attribute of a problem that's best addressed by Social Policy Bonds. Others are:

•         The problem can be solved only in the long term;
•       Existing policies are failing;
•          Diverse, adaptive approaches are going to be necessary;
•         Financial rewards to those involved in achieving objectives are uncorrelated to their effectiveness in doing so; and 
•      Progress toward solving the problem can be readily and objectively monitored.

Many social and environmental problems satisfy these criteria including, at the global level: conflict (war and all forms of political violence) and climate change; and at the national level: crime, unemployment and air and water quality. Other national goals that could be targeted for improvements are literacy, employment and health. I've discussed applications of the Social Policy Bond idea to all these problems, and more, on the SocialGoals.com website.