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News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

This is an image of a photo collage, with two photos side by side. In the left photo, a girl stands in purple shirt and white head scarf, smiling and looking away from the camera. In the right photo, a boy stands outside in snow wearing jeans and a red sweatshirt, looking at the camera and smiling.

Yhdessä (Together): Creating documentary photography on inclusion and friendship in Finnish schools

We embarked on a documentary photography project to capture the people and activities behind a Finnish primary school intervention aimed at fostering social inclusion in schools. Our aim was to showcase the crucial role of visual storytelling in human-centered research and policymaking.

Celebrating a decade of the AEA RCT Registry

The AEA RCT Registry serves as a central repository for information on planned, ongoing, completed, or withdrawn randomized trials in the social sciences. We're celebrating it's tenth anniversary by using the wealth of data (updated every month in the AEA Registry Dataverse) from ten years of...
Four children with backpacks on, walking away from camera

How anticipating benefit loss shapes family choices

In this post, J-PAL staff sit down with Manasi and Rebecca to discuss the results from their randomized evaluation on the effects of anticipating social safety net benefits on family choices.
Gustavo Bobonis in front of fence and trees

Affiliate Spotlight: Gustavo J. Bobonis on advancing evidence generation and use in Puerto Rico

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In this Evidence Champion series, J-PAL North America is recognizing individuals in our network who have made extraordinary contributions to the field of evidence-based policymaking. This piece features the work of Gustavo J. Bobonis, our inaugural researcher recipient. Gustavo is a professor of...
A woman sits with two children on either side of her.

Improving mental health in low- and middle-income settings: Key findings from rigorous research

Mental health conditions are prevalent worldwide, especially among people living in poverty. In 2017, an estimated 10.7 percent of the global population had at least one mental health disorder. Meanwhile, access to services remains low even for those who seek care. Evidence on how to close this...
People looking at papers and graphs

Building research partnerships to understand the promises of Summer Youth Employment Programs, part two

In the second of a two-part blog series, Judd Kessler (University of Pennsylvania), Sara Heller (University of Michigan), and Julia Breitman (New York City Department of Youth and Community Development) discuss their research partnership to evaluate summer youth employment programs and integrating...
Person dips ice cream cone in chocolate

Building research partnerships to understand the promises of Summer Youth Employment Programs

In the first of a two-part blog series, Judd Kessler (University of Pennsylvania), Sara Heller (University of Michigan), and Julia Breitman (New York City Department of Youth and Community Development) discuss their research partnership to evaluate summer youth employment programs and the...
Pregnant woman with smartphone

Leveraging technology to improve child-caregiver interactions at scale

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Can technology be used to improve child-caregiver interactions and support child development? Traditional parenting interventions are often costly and tightly controlled, which limits their large-scale implementation. A low-cost intervention called Crianza Positiva, delivering text and audio...