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Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, and read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters. For media inquiries, please email us.

The Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility in Burkina Faso

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation among households in rural Burkina Faso to examine whether countries in sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing a slower shift in fertility levels due to lack of access to contraception or households wanting large families. Providing married women with access...

The Impact of an Online Math Learning Platform on Test Scores and Attitudes Towards Math in Brazil

Lucas Finamor
Lycia Lima
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impacts of the Khan Academy’s online platform on math scores in Brazilian public schools. Despite improving student’s attitudes towards math, the program had mixed impact on students’ test scores depending on program implementation and...

Does Additional Labor Benefit Microenterprises? Evidence from Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, researchers provided wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises to determine if they would hire more workers, and whether the additional labor would benefit such firms. The study found that while firms increased employment during the subsidy period, there was no lasting impact...

The Impact of Community-Based Environmental Health Promotion Program on Child Health in Western Rwanda

Leodomir Mfura
Ronald Wendt
In western Rwanda, researchers evaluated the impact of community health clubs on household take-up of healthy behaviors and on the health of children under 5 years of age. The program had minimal impact on household behaviors and no impact on caregiver-reported rates of diarrhea among children under...

The Impact of Financial Education for Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore

Researchers evaluated the impact of a financial literacy program for Filipino domestic workers based in Singapore on their financial knowledge, behavior, savings, and remittances. While there was no evidence that being invited to join the program had any impact on financial knowledge or behavior...

Information on Tax Compliance and Perceptions of Equity in Tax Policy in Brazil

Evan Kresch
Laura Zoratto
Researchers are conducting an evaluation that randomized the provision of information in a survey to improve the likelihood that citizens paid their municipal property taxes and understood the role that unequal tax burdens played in determining the likelihood of people paying their full tax burden...

Deferring Wages and Labor Supply in Malawi

Lasse Brune
Researchers partnered with a tea company in Malawi to study the effects of a savings product that allowed workers to defer payment of a part of their wages. The deferred wages program was generally popular and increased savings; in the longer run, it helped workers improve their houses.

Increasing Access to Security and Justice through Women's Help Desks in Police Stations in India

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner
Akshay Mangla
Researchers are employing an RCT to evaluate whether the establishment of police station-level Women’s Help Desks (WHDs), as well as the deployment of additional female personnel to these WHDs, improves the responsiveness of frontline officers to women, as well as levels of crime and crime reporting...