November 2021 North America Newsletter

Good morning,

This month marks the end of an era for J-PAL North America. Eight years after launching this office with Co-Scientific Directors Amy Finkelstein and Lawrence Katz, Mary Ann Bates has stepped down as executive director to continue her work with the White House Office of Management and Budget. We are deeply grateful to Mary Ann for her leadership, and we are excited to see her continue to advance the creation and use of evidence within government.  

As the new Co-Executive Directors of J-PAL North America, we are honored to build upon Mary Ann’s legacy and lead the organization in a series of new projects focused on key areas of pandemic recovery. Our homelessness and housing stability team is currently working with six organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to develop randomized evaluations that will measure the impact of cash transfers on homelessness. To address Covid-19 learning loss, we are continuing our work with California to advise on the scale-up of evidence-based tutoring programs across the state, in addition to providing support on the expansion of effective tutoring practices across New Mexico in partnership with Saga Education. We are also working in collaboration with state and local governments to direct American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds toward evidence-based policies and build capacity within government to conduct high quality randomized evaluations. Finally, to expand the rigorous evidence base, our team will support the implementation of new randomized evaluations of strategies to improve worker opportunity and increase health equity, among other key policy areas. Collectively, we believe that this work has the potential to transform poverty alleviation efforts across the United States.  

While we are committed to translating economic research into action, we also recognize that the field of economics has not historically represented diverse backgrounds. We are seeking to address this exclusion by scaling up the Economics Transformation Project (ETP). ETP is a full-pipeline program designed to spark interest in economics among students from underrepresented minorities and provide skill-building opportunities, aiming to break down structural barriers that these students often face. Beyond ETP, we are working to incorporate a commitment to racial equity throughout our activities, thus improving the quality of our research and advancing evidence-based policies that can more comprehensively address systemic disparities.

During this moment of leadership transition, we also see an opportunity for reflection. We invite you, our partners and supporters, to share your feedback and suggestions on ways that we can improve and better collaborate with you. Please reach out to us at [email protected] or [email protected].  We are grateful for your partnership and are eager to continue this journey to harness evidence to improve lives together. 

Laura Feeney & Vincent Quan
Co-Executive Directors, J-PAL North America

Support us in leveraging the American Rescue Plan to reduce poverty

This Giving Tuesday, November 30, J-PAL North America is inviting members of our community to support our efforts to direct ARP funds to reduce poverty by implementing evidence-based policies and evaluating promising programs across the United States. The ARP, which sets aside $350 billion for state and local governments, offers an unprecedented opportunity for policymakers to address not only short-term recovery needs, but also long-term systemic issues that perpetuate cycles of poverty. Learn more about how J-PAL North America is partnering with state and local governments to alleviate poverty through an evidence-based approach to the ARP.  

Partner spotlight on RIP Medical Debt explores the benefits of rigorous evidence

Allison Sesso, Executive Director of RIP Medical Debt, and Wes Yin, a researcher in the J-PAL network, sat down with J-PAL staff to discuss the ongoing randomized evaluation of RIP Medical Debt’s innovative new model for buying and relieving medical debt. Eighteen percent of Americans in 2020 had outstanding medical debt held by collection agencies, collectively totaling $140 billion of unpaid medical bills. Together, Allison and Wes discuss how they built a successful partnership based on a mutual commitment to learning how medical debt impacts people and how debt forgiveness programs are best designed. Allison emphasizes the importance of going into an evaluation with an open-mind, even if the results cannot be predicted, to understand the real-world impact of their program.

Discussing how qualitative research strengthened the Baby’s First Years study

Sarah Halpern-Meekin and Katherine Magnuson, two researchers conducting the Baby’s First Year’s (BFY) study, reflect on the value of qualitative research in interpreting study results in this blog post. BFY, a J-PAL-funded research project, is assessing the impact of poverty reduction on family life and infant and toddlers’ cognitive, emotional, and brain development. The study recruited 1,000 mothers and randomly assigned them to receive either a large or small cash gift on a debit card each month until their child turned four years old. While the researchers could collect data on how mothers spent this money, the numbers could not tell them why they made certain choices. A series of in-depth interviews with the mothers provided a richer story behind the data. This post is part five in our ongoing blog series on incorporating qualitative research into randomized evaluations.

Featured Evaluation Summary: The effects of youth employment—evidence from New York City

A randomized evaluation of the New York City Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) adds to a growing body of evidence that summer youth employment programs can benefit youth facing barriers to entering the labor market, such as having limited economic opportunity in their neighborhood. At the time of evaluation, the New York City SYEP was the largest in the country, placing nearly 34,000 youths in entry-level jobs. Researchers found that this program reduced criminal justice involvement and mortality rates of program participants. The New York City SYEP also led to increased earnings and employment during the year of participation.

Featured Research Resource: Communicating with a partner about results

Randomized evaluations require collaboration and communication between many stakeholders, including academic researchers, research staff, implementing partners, holders of administrative data, policymakers, and the community. These stakeholders have diverse viewpoints and specialized vocabularies, which can make collaboration difficult. Strong communication, leading to partner engagement, increases the chance of a smoothly run evaluation and the policy impact potential. This resource, combining experience and guidance from numerous researchers and staff in implementing randomized evaluations, provides guidance for researchers on when and how to communicate with partners about results and progress measures of randomized evaluations.