The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)

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Our mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. We do this through research, policy outreach, and training.

Woman sits reading a book with a child in school uniform

News

Zambia to scale Teaching at the Right Level program to 1,800 schools

Building on over a decade of rigorous research around the world and two years of iterative learning in Zambia, the Ministry of General Education will scale up a program called Catch Up to approximately 1,800 schools in Zambia over the next three years.

Girls in school uniforms sit in class

News

Who benefits most from school access policies? A gender breakdown of results from randomized evaluations

Which gender benefits most from policies designed to improve primary school access? Read what J-PAL learned from a review of 25 studies in 14 countries.

Children do arithmetic in chalk on a stone floor in India

Publication

Roll Call: Getting Children Into School

The new J-PAL Bulletin reviews 58 randomized evaluations from 28 low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that tested programs designed to increase school enrollment and attendance. It includes cost-effectiveness analyses and provides practical lessons for policymakers.

A sloping landscape in western Uganda

Evaluation

New research in Science on payments for ecosystem services

In Uganda, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the effectiveness of a program in which landowners were paid to not cut forest trees on their property. During the study period, landowners who were offered contracts to conserve forest cleared 4 percent of forested land, compared to 9 percent in villages where the program was not offered, delaying 3000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per village from being released into the atmosphere.

843 ongoing and completed randomized evaluations in 80 countries