# MEL Fund

> MEL Fund studies a county-level mutual fund: residents pay into education, medical and pension funds by income and draw from them when needed. After one government seed injection, can it run on its own for decades? Research design, cases, simulation method and results.

MEL stands for Medical, Education and Life (pensions). MEL Fund is a research project: a paper study and an individual-level simulation of a county mutual fund, calibrated on a mountain county in western China. It is not a fund in operation, raises no money and accepts no contributions.

Every page of this site is also saved as static HTML. The research pages are available as Markdown at the links below. The Chinese (简体中文) text is the original; the English pages are translations. For Chinese, replace `/en/` with `/zh/` in any URL.

## Research

- [Research design](https://dev.melfund.org/en/research/design.md): The research question, success criteria, phases and every rule of the fund.
- [Lessons from cases](https://dev.melfund.org/en/research/cases.md): Mechanisms, parameters and failure modes from 11 historical and recent cases.
- [Method and data](https://dev.melfund.org/en/research/method.md): Why this county, which public data, and how the simulation is built and calibrated.
- [Results (v1)](https://dev.melfund.org/en/research/results.md): Minimum seed capital, the effect of pooling, the voluntary ceiling and the stress tests.
- [Limits and next steps](https://dev.melfund.org/en/research/limits.md): Where the v1 model falls short and what v2 will add.

## 研究（中文原文）

- [研究设计](https://dev.melfund.org/zh/research/design.md): 研究命题、成功标准、发展阶段和基金制度的全部规则。
- [案例借鉴](https://dev.melfund.org/zh/research/cases.md): 从 11 个历史和新兴案例中得到的机制、参数和失败模式。
- [方法与数据](https://dev.melfund.org/zh/research/method.md): 为什么选这个县，用了哪些公开数据，仿真模型怎样建立和校准。
- [v1 结果](https://dev.melfund.org/zh/research/results.md): 最低启动注资、合池效果、自愿参与上限和压力测试的结果。
- [局限与下一步](https://dev.melfund.org/zh/research/limits.md): v1 模型的局限，以及 v2 计划补充的工作。

## Optional

- [Everything in one file](https://dev.melfund.org/llms-full.txt): The key findings and every research page, in English and in Chinese.
- [Home page](https://dev.melfund.org/en): The summary of the research.
- [Terms of use](https://dev.melfund.org/en/terms)
- [Privacy policy](https://dev.melfund.org/en/privacy)