The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
Our affiliated professors are based at over 120 universities and conduct randomized evaluations around the world to design, evaluate, and improve programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty. They set their own research agendas, raise funds to support their evaluations, and work with J-PAL staff on research, policy outreach, and training.
Our Board of Directors, which is composed of J-PAL affiliated professors and senior management, provides overall strategic guidance to J-PAL, our sector programs, and regional offices.
We host events around the world and online to share results and policy lessons from randomized evaluations, to build new partnerships between researchers and practitioners, and to train organizations on how to design and conduct randomized evaluations, and use evidence from impact evaluations.
Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters, and connect with us for media inquiries.
Based at leading universities around the world, our experts are economists who use randomized evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty. Connect with us for all media inquiries and we'll help you find the right person to shed insight on your story.
J-PAL is based at MIT in Cambridge, MA and has seven regional offices at leading universities in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
J-PAL is based at MIT in Cambridge, MA and has seven regional offices at leading universities in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Our global office is based at the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It serves as the head office for our network of seven independent regional offices.
Led by affiliated professors, J-PAL sectors guide our research and policy work by conducting literature reviews; by managing research initiatives that promote the rigorous evaluation of innovative interventions by affiliates; and by summarizing findings and lessons from randomized evaluations and producing cost-effectiveness analyses to help inform relevant policy debates.
Led by affiliated professors, J-PAL sectors guide our research and policy work by conducting literature reviews; by managing research initiatives that promote the rigorous evaluation of innovative interventions by affiliates; and by summarizing findings and lessons from randomized evaluations and producing cost-effectiveness analyses to help inform relevant policy debates.
How do policies affecting private sector firms impact productivity gaps between higher-income and lower-income countries? How do firms’ own policies impact economic growth and worker welfare?
How can we identify effective policies and programs in low- and middle-income countries that provide financial assistance to low-income families, insuring against shocks and breaking poverty traps?
This post highlights how rigorous impact evaluations can contribute to this broader reflection, including by examining interventions from neighboring countries outside the region facing similar challenges, such as migrant and refugee inclusion in Bulgaria and Turkey.
Adam Osman is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Co-Scientific Director at J-PAL Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Adam’s work using randomized evaluations to test theories about improving the lives of the poor serves to fill the gap in...
To support education systems to focus on functional literacy and numeracy, UNICEF is partnering with The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL at MIT), Pratham , and Delivery Associates .
Following the shift to online instruction across Italian schools in March 2020, J-PAL affiliates Michela Carlana (Harvard University) and Eliana La Ferrara (Bocconi University) rapidly launched an online tutoring program to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds who were lagging behind during...
In this blog post, members of a research-practice partnership with the Puerto Rico Department of Education reflect on their strategies to improve education outcomes and to persevere during the Covid-19 pandemic.
When a body of academic literature points to an effective new approach to generate meaningful learning gains for pupils, practitioners take notice. But this may not be the complete story. Timothy Sullivan, Director of Learning Innovation at education provider NewGlobe, shares insights from recent...
With an abundance of important and sometimes surprising findings from studies of socioeconomic interventions in recent decades, it is clear that development in the absence of evidence-based policymaking is a fool's errand. The small details matter as much as—and sometimes more than—the economic big...
Los investigadores afiliados a la red de J-PAL han conducido más de ochenta evaluaciones aleatorizadas de programas y políticas sociales, algunas de estas aún en curso, en veinte países de Europa, con un enfoque particular en los ámbitos educativo y laboral.