Blog

News

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 Cash Transfers on Early Childhood Health and Cognitive Development in Nicaragua

Norbert Schady
Renos Vakis
In Nicaragua, researchers examined the impact of a national conditional cash transfer (CCT) program on early childhood health and development. They found that the program caused substantial and lasting improvements in child health and development outcomes. However, it seems that program components...

Union Leaders and Factory Workers’ Collective Action in Myanmar

Labor movements can improve workers’ lives but face great difficulty in getting workers to agree on common goals and take collective actions. In garment factory workers’ group discussions on minimum wage policies in Myanmar, researchers randomly included union leaders to study whether the presence...

Educational Incentives for Parents and Children in India

A common strategy for increasing school attendance is to offer cash rewards or other incentives to households, usually to the parents, when their children attend or perform well in school. In Gurgaon, India, researchers tested whether giving education incentives to parents or children influenced the...

Social Integration Effects of Pre-Migration Information Sessions in the Philippines

Victoria S. Licuanan
Andreas Steinmayr
Erwin Tiongson
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to investigate whether an expanded and more thorough version of an orientation program in the Philippines improved socioeconomic outcomes and facilitated settlement for migrants upon moving to the United States. The research team found that though the...

Impact of Home Computers on the Academic Achievement of Low-Income Children in the United States

Jonathan Robinson
Researchers analyzed the impact of a program that provided students in California with a home computer on students’ academic achievement. The program had no effect (either positive or negative) on any educational outcome, including grades, standardized test scores, and attendance.

The Impact of Informational Meetings on Secondary School Choice in Kenya

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of short informational meetings with students and parents on secondary school choice. They found that these meetings increased students’ and parents’ knowledge of the application process and led students to pick lower-cost and more...

Measuring the Critical Window for Cognitive Skill Formation and Physical Development in Nicaragua

John A. Maluccio
In Nicaragua, researchers compared the cognitive and health outcomes of boys whose families received conditional cash transfers in the first three years of their lives to those who received the transfers later. Exposing boys to the program during the first 1,000 days of life led to better cognitive...

Mobilizing Group Membership: The Impact of Personalization and Social Pressure Emails in the United States

James N. Druckman
This study evaluated the efficacy of three different types of emails in encouraging group membership: an impersonal email, a personalized email, and a personalized email that included an element of social pressure. Researchers found that membership increased most among recipients of the social...