A family stood in the shop they started with support from Bab Amal, Egypt's version of the Graduation Approach, implemented by the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development, BRAC, and other local partners.

Policy and Scale Engagement

To date, more than 600 million people globally have been reached by programs and policies informed by evaluations led by J-PAL affiliated researchers—and we face unprecedented demand for engagement from governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies, NGOs, philanthropists, and corporations seeking to expand their impact and improve more people's lives. 

This demand, coupled with the continued growth of our research network, expanding evidence base, and strengthening of our regional presence, has led to an expansion in our evidence-to-policy partnerships worldwide through three main pillars: 

government building

1. Investing in locally-led government partnerships

J-PAL regional offices provide flexible, responsive input to decision-makers when policy windows emerge. We build relationships with high-level policymakers, create embedded labs, co-create new research via randomized evaluations, support work to surface and understand policy priorities and problems using existing data, and conduct exploratory research. 

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2. Catalyzing funding to adapt, test, and scale

Through our Innovation in Government Initiative, we fund technical assistance to governments to adapt, test, and scale evidence-informed innovations with strong potential to improve the lives of millions of people living in poverty. We also advise bilateral and multilateral donors to help direct aid funding toward the most effective programs.

In 2024, we launched partnerships with USAID and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to generate new evaluations, build capacity for evidence use, and inform ongoing policies and programs. 

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3. Making evidence more accessible and actionable

  • Revealing rich policy insights: Our team of expert staff work with our affiliated researchers to distill results from rigorous evaluations into lessons that are clear, concise, and relevant to policymakers. New evaluation summaries, Policy Insights, Evidence-to-Policy Case Studies, in-depth Evidence Wrap-Ups, and other resources connect the dots between research and action and create a strong foundation for policy engagement.
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  • Shaping global conversations through thought leadership: Our staff, leadership, and affiliated researchers are active contributors to global discourse on development and social policy, speaking at major policy gatherings from Davos to the UN General Assembly to COP to G20 summits and beyond.

    Our affiliated researchers and staff also published more than 16 op-eds in outlets around the world in 2024, highlighting urgent policy insights from randomized evaluations. From The Hill and Foreign Affairs in the US to Chile’s El Mercurio, South Africa’s Daily Maverick, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine, and India’s Hindustan Times, our experts are raising awareness of evidence-informed solutions to urgent challenges and contributing to global discourse.

Thirty active embedded government labs and strategic partnerships 

In 2024, we made significant progress expanding and strengthening key government and policy partnerships around the world. 

  • In partnership with Community Jameel, we launched three new Air and Water Labs in Egypt, India, and South Africa to co-generate evidence-based solutions to the most pressing clean air and water challenges. 
  • In Brazil, the National Secretariat for Care and Family is incorporating inputs from J-PAL into the country’s first national care policy. 
  • In Egypt, J-PAL’s Egypt Impact Lab was formally launched in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development with seven embedded staff, focusing on leveraging administrative data to strengthen evidence use in education and health policy, among other topics. 
  • In India, J-PAL South Asia entered into a novel partnership with the Ministry of Rural Development to support the expansion of the Graduation approach across the country with the potential to reach over 210 million people. 

 

  • In Mexico, J-PAL’s forthcoming labs will be based in the Secretariat of Planning of Querétaro, focusing on bringing rigorous evidence to their education and health programs; and the National Institute of Housing, focusing on helping innovate housing mortgage and debt restructuring programs.
  • In the United States, J-PAL North America announced partnerships with four state and local governments through their Leveraging Evaluation and Evidence for Equitable Recovery (LEVER) evaluation incubator, which provides funding and technical assistance to launch a randomized evaluation of a program. 

New scale-ups

  • In Brazil, the state of Espírito Santo rolled out an evidence-based AI education technology platform to high school seniors statewide, reaching more than 100,000 students. The platform provides rapid writing feedback and led to improvements in students’ writing abilities and increased their scores on the national university admissions exam.
  • In India, J-PAL’s government partners are reaching 4.2 million students through scaling evidence-based education programs and systems change efforts. This success is in large part driven by gender attitudes awareness programs that have reached 2.8 million students in the state of Odisha (by 2025), supported by the NGO Breakthrough and J-PAL and including over $1.1 million of investment from the Odisha government. The programs have also reached 800,000 students in the state of Punjab. 

 

  • In India, the government of Karnataka is scaling an evidence-based phone-based tutoring program to over 600,000 students based on evidence and partners J-PAL introduced through our ongoing state partnership. 
  • In Rwanda, J-PAL Africa is working closely with the government to pilot and scale a highly cost-effective water treatment program to reach families of young children who often drink untreated water.

Helping policymakers maximize value for money

J-PAL’s cost-effectiveness and welfare analysis team helps policymakers incorporate practical cost considerations into policymaking. This includes producing both cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) and conducting a form of cost-benefit analysis known as the marginal value of public funds (MVPF).

The cost-effectiveness ratio equals impact on a specific outcome divided by total program cost to implementer and beneficiaries

We’ve completed dozens of analyses that help decision-makers use evidence in their everyday work. In addition to expanding this work to include more studies on the cost-effectiveness of different programs to improve education, we are now expanding to women’s employment and income and household income. We are also exploring new CEA work in the climate change space, like estimating the cost per ton of CO2 emissions abated. 

Beyond CEA and cost-benefit analyses produced by J-PAL, we are creating a suite of public resources to share guidance and best practices for others:

Evidence-informed insights on urgent policy topics

J-PAL’s written policy products synthesize findings from randomized evaluations for policymakers and are critical to our efforts to ensure evidence feeds into decision-making. In 2024, we released eight new Policy Insights and updated two Insights based on new evidence, covering topics ranging from improving market access for small firms to building farmers' resilience to climate change to improving access and use of clean water. 

Learn about new Policy Insights via our podcast series with VoxDev Talks:

We also released a guide on designing and implementing life skills training programs and a measurement guide for assessing holistic skills in education programs. 


The Year Ahead

  • Fund technical assistance for scale: J-PAL’s Innovation in Government Initiative received new funding to expand our efforts to provide technical assistance to governments to adapt, pilot, and scale evidence-informed innovations with strong potential to improve the lives of people living in poverty.
  • Expand embedded labs: We’ll work with governments to provide real-time, hands-on technical support through embedded staff and the launch of new embedded labs to surface opportunities to co-create evidence, improve data quality and usability, and pilot and scale evidence-informed interventions.
  • Elevate bold ideas: We’ll bring the most promising social innovations with high potential for scale and impact to the forefront of global discourse through events, publications, and thought leadership. 
  • Launch new bilateral evidence partnerships: We will kick off two new partnerships, the Promoting Impact and Learning with Cost-Effectiveness Evidence (PILCEE) program with USAID and the Strategic Impact Evaluation and Learning (SIEL) program with FCDO, both of which center on increasing the use of rigorous evidence within these large-scale institutions and the broader global development community. 
  • Expand our work on cost effectiveness: In the year ahead, we plan to analyze cost effectiveness data for 100+ programs in education, social protection, labor markets, and more, and will share these findings with policy partners to help them make evidence-informed decisions.

Lead photo credit: Sawiris Foundation for Social Development 

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