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.
J-PAL recognizes that there is a lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of economics and in our field of work. Read about what actions we are taking to address this.
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?
Morocco ranked 48th of 50 countries in the most recent international study of primary school literacy (PIRLS). A key problem faced by Moroccan students learning to read is the difference between the colloquial Arabic used at home and the formal Arabic (Modern...
The Anandam Pathyacharya happiness curriculum was developed by the Dream a Dream foundation in partnership with the government of Uttarakhand, India, and will be implemented in grades 1-8 across Uttarakhand public schools. The curriculum consists of daily...
The learning crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. As governments seek to address the learning loss, so far, we know tutoring has been a widely proposed solution because it has proven to have a big positive effect on learning. We propose a...
School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic will have lasting effects on millions of children in Pakistan, worsening the already critical pre-pandemic “learning crisis." This project will investigate the ability of tutoring services to address this learning...
This project studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education and psychological wellbeing of primary school children in the state of Assam, India. It builds on a randomized evaluation conducted between 2018 and 2020, which covered more than 5,500...
We propose a pilot to study the feasibility of a scalable intervention and research program addressing child development and school readiness in India for children that should be attending preschool centers. If shown to be feasible we will plan a randomized...
This project explores the adoption, diffusion, and impacts of an online math curriculum specifically designed to provide a more equitable environment for remote learning and promote remedial education in preparation for school reopening. 187 schools from the...
Globally, school related gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread and the rate of impunity of such crimes is very high. How can this form of violence in schools be prevented? Can improvements in information frictions of girls, boys, and teachers change social...
This project will estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant school closures on the cognitive skills of Ghanaian children aged 14-96 months old. The study leverages the Ghana Caregiver and Child Panel Study (GCCPS), which has been tracking the...
This project proposes a randomized evaluation of a “hybrid” digital learning program targeted at children in Grades 5-8 in Indian villages. With the COVID-19 pandemic widening the pre-existing learning gap, we hypothesize that programs with appropriate high...
The option to obtain secondary school equivalency by passing the national exit exam is a common policy in many low- and middle-income countries, and accounts for a significant share of the education sector. As COVID-19 disrupts traditional education, we may...
This study investigates a state-wide COVID-19 response strategy that leverages a remote-learning solution to teach students while government-run schools remain closed (Haryana's “Ghar se Padhao” program). In a cluster-randomized evaluation, 80 schools receive...
Schools with better management practices are associated with higher student learning, particularly during major school disruptions such as COVID-19. But there is limited experimental evidence on the causal effect of improving school management practices on...
COVID-19 has created unprecedented difficulties for the education sector in Bangladesh, as schools remain closed since March 2020. To tackle this crisis, Bangladesh has taken a multi-pronged approach—delivering education through the national terrestrial...
The stigma surrounding menstruation may prevent girls from accessing the information and products they need to manage menstruation effectively and healthily. Moreover, this stigma (and its resulting impacts on health behaviors) may reduce girls’ ability and...
School closures and the transition to remote learning around the world has disproportionately affected low socioeconomic status (SES) students. However, even within the low SES students, the frictions to learning largely vary based on whether they attend...
The Rwanda Education Board (REB) has had a longstanding interest in utilizing ICT in its classrooms and education system more broadly. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated school closures have placed renewed and heightened emphasis on education ICT. Based on...
COVID-19 has upended the education sector, with schools closing and shifting to remote instruction. There is increasing concern that in many developing countries where low cost private schools are a large share of the market that COVID-19 closure could lead to...
With over 1.5 billion learners out of school, the COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed education systems worldwide. This necessitates new education models, including the use of education technology for distance learning. Many efforts to date have focused on higher...
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the governments of several countries ordered the closure of all schools and universities. Educators were forced to rapidly adapt to distance learning. At home, students from underprivileged backgrounds are less likely to...
Improvements in management practices can generate stunning productivity improvement in the private sector. Although their adoption in the education sector has been slow, management-level interventions have been shown to lead to improvements in school quality...
The current Covid-19 pandemic is likely to differentially impact human capital formation in low-income countries. Job loss resulting from social distancing policies, combined with limited access to credit and saving mechanisms, may impede schooling access for...
First-generation learners may not receive adequate parental inputs for education at home and this can have a particularly adverse effect due to school closures during pandemics and disasters. This proposal development project will explore the effects of a home...
India has experienced a fourfold increase in tertiary enrollment over two decades, which has coincided with high rates of unemployment for college graduates. In particular, it is difficult for students to convey information about their human capital to...
Secondary school students in low and middle-income countries invest as much time studying the school curriculum independently as their high-income counterparts. However, the physical conditions in which they do so differ vastly. According to PISA 2018, more...
A randomized evaluation in Odisha, India of the Secondary School Readiness Program during the 2019-2020 academic year found it improved learning for grade 9 students by 0.11 standard deviations, 0.65 additional years of schooling. This study will examine the...
The option to obtain secondary school equivalency by passing the national exit exam is a common policy in many developing countries and accounts for a large share of the education sector. However, the price for this alternative pathway may be a significant...
This is a long-term follow-up survey as part of an RCT of a subsidized dual apprenticeship program combining on-the-job and theoretical training in Côte d’Ivoire. This project benefitted from an earlier round of PPE funding, which allowed the research team to...
Deferred Acceptance Algorithms (DA) are widely used in centralized college admission systems. For fairness, exam score is often the only determinant for admission in these systems. Using administrative data from China, researchers find that conditional on exam...
Due to the unprecedented global outbreak of COVID-19, the education sector worldwide is experiencing a unique crisis. Schools across the world have shut down and children could potentially be out of school for several months. In a country like Pakistan, where...
Often parents and students are misinformed about school quality. This is problematic, since accountability through school choice or by voicing concerns (e.g., through parent-teacher associations) could dramatically improve the performance of school systems. A...
Information about the success of women and minorities can be considered a public good if it changes perceptions about what talented students from underrepresented backgrounds think they can achieve. Concerns around social image and modesty norms, however...
In the proposed research, I will first document the extent to which parent and child preferences for secondary school are misaligned, leading to sub-optimal secondary schooling choices. I will then implement a randomized-controlled-trial in 175 Kenyan primary...
Opioid addiction among adolescent boys is a first-order problem in Punjab (India) and has predictably negative consequences for secondary school outcomes. This project seeks to develop a “edutainment” based intervention to reduce addiction and consequently...
Teacher and parental expectations of student effort and achievement are very low in public education systems in developing countries, especially for students from low socio-economic backgrounds. This study directly targets an important determinant of student...
Though Tanzania has made significant progress toward increasing enrollment in secondary schools, the quality of learning is often quite low. In 2015, only 68% of students passed the secondary school national exam (Certificate in Secondary Education Examination...
This study investigates how barriers to information access, flawed expectations about the job market, and inefficient planning (in terms of job search or starting-up a business) affect labor outcomes of young jobseekers entering the job market. The...
Despite substantial increase in primary school enrollment in Pakistan, 59% of girls do not complete primary school. Scant research exists on improving learning and later life outcomes for out of school female adolescents. We request funding for a 300-village...
About a quarter of school-age children in the world report to experience some sort of peer violence at school. Research shows that experiencing verbal and physical bullying at school during crucial developmental periods, particularly in adolescence, may have...
School-based violence is a pervasive issue worldwide and harms children’s physical and emotional well-being. While data exist describing students’ reported experiences of violence, little is known about the more complex dynamics within schools of perceived...
Exclusionary stereotypes, biased attitudes and deep-rooted prejudices continue to hinder integration of historically “backward” castes in India into the mainstream economy. By increasing interaction between members of different groups, affirmative action...
Female labor force participation (FLFP) is strikingly low in India. Vocational training may be key to increasing women’s employment. However, many features of the Indian context may prevent women from availing the full benefits of vocational training, by...
The practice of child marriage is still prevalent in several pockets in Indonesia and often leads to a discontinuation of post-primary education, particularly among girls. Our proposed intervention aims to reduce the incidence of child marriage and improve...
Studies from Ghana and India show that teaching to the learning level of primary school students instead of the grade level—“targeted instruction”—improves foundational literacy and numeracy. As this program has spread to 11 African countries, this study...
We propose to conduct a randomized evaluation of a system that tracks student absences and notifies parents when students miss school in secondary public schools in the Province of Salta, Argentina. The system includes an online platform, to which staff...
Recent evidence documents that low-cost interventions aimed at giving teenagers a growth mindset have very sizable and positive effects on their test scores and on high school drop-out rates. In a partnership with Rio de Janeiro State Secretary of Education...
This project proposes a randomized evaluation of a “hybrid” digital learning program targeted at children in Grades 5-8 in Indian villages. We hypothesize that programs with appropriate high-quality digital content made available on easily accessible devices...
As an emotional and motivational amplifier, imagery could be an effective pedagogical tool for boosting student motivation, learning how to learn and thinking about the future. Yet its educational value remains underexplored. To address this gap, we have...
As an emotional and motivational amplifier, imagery could be an effective pedagogical tool for boosting student motivation, learning how to learn and thinking about the future. Yet its educational value remains underexplored. To address this gap, we have...
Our project will combine new theory and an RCT in Paraguay to provide new in-sights into tax evasion by firms and how policymakers can respond to reduce evasion. We extend the canonical model of tax evasion in two ways. First, we model firms re-porting...
We propose to implement a large-scale randomized educational intervention that aims to cultivate and stimulate curiosity in the classroom environment. The study is motivated by the evidence on the importance of curiosity as a fundamental driver of academic...
One explanation for high youth unemployment is that work-seekers lack the skills required by firms. Another is that firms are uncertain about entry-level job seekers’ skills. Simply getting young people a foot in the door may alleviate both these constraints -...
Nepal’s 2015 Constitution guaranteed the right to free education up to the secondary level and gave the responsibility to manage and operate secondary education to local governments. Elections for local governments occurred in 2017, with the election of a...
Centralized admission mechanisms, especially the “Deferred Acceptance (DA)” algorithm, have been increasingly adopted in college admission among developing countries. For fairness, exam score is often the only determinant for admission in these systems. Using...
Youth unemployment is an increasing concern in countries across the developing world, including Tanzania. Many governments and international organizations are encouraging self-employment through micro- and small-enterprise development as a solution. Because...
This study seeks to do the following: 1) extend a longitudinal dataset of students who were participants in a randomized literacy intervention during grades 1-4, as they transition out of primary school and into their adolescence years; 2) measure the effects...
Growing evidence shows that schools with better management practices achieve better results. Yet, little evidence exists on how to improve these practices—especially in developing countries. Most prior studies have sought to influence school management by...
Bridge International Academies designed and is piloting, using random assignment, three programs to improve student learning in grades 5 through 8 across approximately 500 academies located in Kenya and Nigeria. To increase the quality of these three RCTs and...
This project studies the long-term impacts of Educate!, an innovative upper-secondary school-based intervention in Uganda designed to enhance adolescents’ technical and soft-skills and to improve their success in formal employment and entrepreneurial...
Rural Ugandans face major challenges in ensuring that children attend school. Most schools in rural Uganda are private and school fees account for a significant fraction of household income. However, the timing of school fees does not match the timing of...
In Ghana, a large gender gap in participation exists across fields of study in senior secondary school; in home economics, 89.6% of students are girls while in general science, only 34% are girls (Ministry of Education, 2013). Recent research shows that...
Despite substantial gains in secondary school enrollment in India, the median 9th-grade student is below grade-level in numeracy and language. Previous studies of primary school students have shown that targeted instruction—teaching at the level of the student...
Lack of skill development has been a core policy issue in India over the last decade and ambitious skill training programs have been initialized by the government to skill the youth. However, policy reports and prior studies suggest that these programs have...
Artificial intelligence has the potential of – perfectly or imperfectly – substituting time-intensive teacher tasks. However, evidence on whether and how this impacts learning is still scant. We propose a randomized evaluation of a program that uses automated...
Demand-side interventions have proved effective at increasing education participation in developing countries, including for marginalized subgroups. However, there is less evidence showing that these classes of interventions improve learning outcomes. We study...
This project measures the direct incentive effect and sorting effect of incentivizing teachers based a subjective measure, their principal’s evaluation of them, compared to incentives based on percentile value added or no incentive pay. Existing work has shown...
The unemployability crisis – where jobseekers lack the necessary knowledge and skills to join the modern workforce – is particularly severe in India. Each year, over 12 million youths enter the workforce, but only 30% are employable. Women are even less likely...
This proposal suggests an experimental evaluation to investigate the causal effect of “Avanti Sankalp” – a teacher capacity building program that promotes blended instruction – on student learning. It will be implemented in 240 public secondary schools in...
The perceptions of low-income families about the payoff from schooling often leads them to underinvest in education. Many experiments have tried to influence these perceptions by providing information on the returns to schooling or school quality. The few...
In this project, we work together with the Ministry of Higher Education of the Dominican Republic to design and evaluate different aspects of their post-secondary financial aid policy. Guided by both theory and empirical evidence, we work with the government...
Raising teacher effort and capacity remains a frontier challenge in developing countries as few evidence-based and politically-feasible interventions have been shown to achieve this goal. We propose to conduct a randomized evaluation of a teacher fellowship...
We measure the impact of a program designed to improve adolescent girls' human capital through the distribution of secondary education scholarships in Niger, where women face among the starkest gender inequalities in the world. In order to measure the impact...
Ensuring quality teaching is a challenge around the world, and one which financial incentives have not been able to solve. This proposal tests the value of a fundamental pedagogical transformation in improving the quality of teaching and, thereby, parental...
Even though information frictions have been widely studied regarding decisions involving higher education, most research has studied these frictions as static, overlooking the dynamic component that might be embedded in the process. In this study, we will...
Small firms in developing countries are commonly engaged in highly-technical, capital-intensive industries. These industries are subject to well-established inefficiencies exacerbated by a lack of technical knowledge and an under-provision of employee training...
The effectiveness of training and placement programs is often limited by the scarcity of job opportunities. We study a program targeted to rural high-school dropouts in India, in a context where job vacancies abound but finding workers who will join when...
Recognition of Prior Learning systems (RPLs) certify human capital that has been acquired outside of the formal education system. Such certification can reduce inefficiency and improve labor market outcomes by allowing workers to credibly indicate their level...
With one of the lowest primary completion rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, youth in Côte d'Ivoire lack the necessary skills to engage in productive employment. In this context, apprenticeship programs are a major source of post-primary education in West Africa...
In the developing world, vocational training has been proposed as a potentially promising educational alternative to improve employability and school-to-work transitions among youth. We investigate whether access to post-secondary scholarships improves...
We evaluate how public school students in Peru develop their preferences across different fields of study, their beliefs regarding their own talents and the feasibility of attending college, and how these beliefs affect their decisions along several margins...
According to large-scale surveys, most children and adolescents in India perform poorly in “abstract” arithmetic (i.e., the arithmetic operations typically taught in school). Yet, those employed in informal markets seem to perform relatively complex arithmetic...
In this project, we propose a pilot teacher-coaching program in the state of Sonora, in Mexico. The program would be implemented with lower secondary teachers in 50 of the country's "telesecundaria" and technical secondary schools (7-9th grade). We will...
Youth unemployment is a major policy problem in Sub-Saharan Africa. Apprenticeships are a promising avenue to address youth unemployment as they provide relevant occupational skills training and work experience in the private sector. In this project we conduct...
Even though educational access has increased in Pakistan since 2000, learning levels remain disturbingly low. The methods available to explain complex subject matter, the instructional techniques that teachers use, and the teachers’ own content knowledge are...
Hard skills such as fluency in English are associated with better labor market outcomes in India (Chin et al., 2013). Soft skills such as grit are also valuable in the labor market (Heckman and Kautz, 2012). However, the lack of these skills may be...
Belief in one’s private ability to succeed in school can have large impacts on private educational investment. Growth mindset interventions, which aim to increase individuals’ perceived abilities to learn, have been shown to reverse downward grade trajectories...
In 2015, close to 90% of Tanzanian secondary school students failed their national mathematics examination. We ask to what extent a low-cost, technology-based intervention can remedy this situation. Collaborating with 172 secondary schools without electricity...
Economists have found that providing students with information on the returns to schooling can induce them to stay in school longer and improve their achievement. Similarly, psychologists have found that informing students about the brain’s capacity to grow...
At least ten countries across Africa, including Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Namibia, are currently undergoing secondary curriculum reforms to teach youth the skills they need to succeed after school. Yet many of these reforms are not effective due to...
Dropout is a common problem in junior and senior high schools across many developing countries. The Dominican Republic is no different: 38 percent of students taking national exams in 8th grade drop out by the next set of high-stake exams in 12th grade...
In Benin, as elsewhere in the world, education of girls lags behind that of boys in a number of dimensions, e.g. enrollment, promotion and graduation rates. While these measures have seen some improvement in the recent years, they do not guarantee that neither...
At least ten countries across Africa, including Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Namibia, are currently undergoing secondary curriculum reforms to teach youth the skills they need to succeed after school. Yet many of these reforms are not effective due to...
Ever-larger proportions of children are progressing to secondary schooling in India. However, weak foundational academic skills in primary schools have made it very challenging to provide effective instruction in secondary schools. Classroom instruction...
The effects of education policies depend on individuals’ behavioral responses, which can either enhance or undo the policies’ intended impacts. This project aims to understand one important aspect of parental behavior -- how parents allocate their investments...
We propose a randomized pilot evaluation of an ambitious attempt to improve secondary school pedagogy and governance at scale in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The program targets these dimensions directly through a combination of (a) regular monitoring...
Many developing countries are characterized by gender gaps in educational attainment that widen as cohorts progress through secondary school, leading to the failure of disproportionate number of girls to graduate. The objective of this pilot is to explore the...
This study identifies the impact of information on demand for education. We will provide a randomly selected group of Ghanaian junior high school students with application strategies and information about the selectivity and exam performance of secondary...
Pregnancy and early childbearing can limit teenage girls' human capital accumulation and labor force participation. At the same time, a lack of skills and limited labor market opportunities increase teenage girls' financial dependency on men, possibly leading...
To address critically high levels of youth unemployment and under-employment, as well as an apparent mismatch between youth’s skills versus those demanded by employers, the Indian Government has established a new Public-Private Partnership: the National...
The project examines the impact of job-search assistance and career guidance on youth employment. The project is in collaboration with Silatech, which runs online job-search portals in several Arab countries, where youth unemployment is especially high. The...
This project aims to leverage a technology-based learning model to both increase the supply of high quality education and to increase the demand for learning (through incentives for student effort). The Nalanda project is developing and deploying a scalable...
Together with India's Aajeevika Skills program, which will provide vocational training for 5 million unemployed rural youth between 2012 and 2017, we propose a pilot study on how to more effectively integrate rural young women into the labor force. We will...
This project will examine the effectiveness of potentially complementary interventions aimed at boosting the employability of youth and the productivity of their self-employment ventures in a less-developed country. In particular, we seek to compare and...
We propose to test the effectiveness of sending parents high frequency SMS messages with information on their children’s activities and behavior at school, as well as advice on parental involvement with the school. Our main hypothesis is that frequent text...
There is a large market for education services for children in the developing world, with many of these services provided by private education service providers. Yet little is known about how prices influence demand and utilization of these services. This...
School data for Zambia shows a dramatic decline in female enrollment around the transition to fee-based secondary school. Moreover, young women of this age in Zambia contract HIV at twice the rate of young men. We propose that the ability to communicate within...
Many Indian students graduate with bachelor's degrees, but are unable to find work. In this project, we propose to evaluate whether providing employers with more detailed information on recent graduates' skills and aptitudes can improve their labor market...
Evidence suggests that despite completion of secondary schooling, students in Ghana are not gaining basic skills important for their future success. Furthermore, relatively little information about the quality of secondary school and its relationship to...
Business and labor market successes are thought to depend on a series of economic/business "hard" skills and social-emotional "soft" skills. Soft skills include self-regulation, self-actualization, communication, win-win judgment, persona power, negotiation...
Adolescent girls in Bangladesh are seeing increased rates of enrollment in secondary school, but face high rates of drop out and early marriage, which curtail formal and informal skill acquisition. This study follows adolescent girls who took part in a program...
Massive on line courses have the potential to make quality higher education accessible to a much larger public, but they have been plagued by low retention rates. Using the online course “The Challenges of Global Poverty,” we propose to implement a series of...
This study is a randomized evaluation of a secondary-school-based attitude-change program aimed at promoting gender equality, reducing son preference in reproductive decisions, and improving girls’ school enrollment. The premise is that a promising way to...
We evaluate how public school students in Peru develop their preferences across different fields of study, their beliefs regarding their own talents and the feasibility of attending college, and how these beliefs affect their decisions along several margins...
We conjecture that primary leaving exam systems in Africa create educational triage, limiting educational opportunities for many students. Because leaving exam results receive significant public scrutiny, educators face incentives to devote resources to...