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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 Impact of Poverty Reduction on Child Health, Nutrition, and Sleep in the United States

Nathan Fox
Sarah Halpern-Meekin
Emma Hart
Alicia Kunin-Batson
Katherine Magnuson
Kimberly Noble
Jessica Sperber
Hiro Yoshikawa
To understand the causal impact of poverty reduction on children’s health, nutrition, sleep, and healthcare utilization, among other outcomes, researchers randomly assigned new mothers to receive an unconditional cash transfer of $333 (high-cash group) or $20 per month (low-cash group) in the Baby’s...

Cash Transfers and Market Access to Increase Household Welfare in Rural Liberia and Malawi

Dahyeon Jeong
Naresh Kumar
David Park
Alan Spearot
In Liberia and Malawi, researchers partnered with Innovations for Poverty Action, GiveDirectly, and USAID to evaluate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer and market access program on food security, spending, income, resilience to health shocks, intimate partner violence, and psychological...

The Impact of Targeted Teaching on Secondary School Learning Outcomes in India

Researchers evaluated a secondary school readiness program, Utkarsh, that provided targeted instruction to students in Odisha, India.

Delegating Property Tax Collection to Local Elites in the DRC

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation during the 2018 property tax collection campaign to test the impact of delegating tax collection to local chiefs. Where local chiefs collected taxes, households were more tax compliant than where state collectors collected, mainly because chiefs had...

Energy Efficiency in Groundwater Extraction for Agriculture in Bangladesh

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing subsidies for a soil monitoring technology on the electricity used to pump groundwater to agricultural fields in rural Bangladesh. They found that the technology reduced the amount of electricity used for irrigation, but...

The Impact of Targeted Mailers to Re-Engage US Voters with Criminal Convictions

Laurel Eckhouse
Eric Foster-Moore
Allison Harris
Hannah Walker
Researchers evaluated the impact of targeted mailings encouraging people with criminal records to register to vote on voting behavior in North Carolina. Mailers increased both voter registration and general election turnout among people with past criminal convictions.

Textbooks and Test Scores in Kenya

Sylvie Moulin
Researchers evaluated the impact of a program that provided additional textbooks to primary schools in Kenya on students, teachers, and overall learning. This study found no evidence that textbook provision increased average test scores, or that it reduced either grade repetition or dropout rates.