Despite large advances in school enrollment over the last decade, approximately 262 million children, adolescents, and youth between the ages of 6 and 17 are still out of school, according to UNESCO. In Latin America and elsewhere, school dropout is a key obstacle to universal school attendance: in the region, 15.5 percent of students dropped out during their time in primary school in 2016. Read More

It’s easy to talk about increasing the use of evidence in policy—but what does it take to do this in practice? What are some first steps governments can take to build a culture of using data and evidence in decision-making? What role can researchers and practitioners play in supporting these efforts?

Our new J-PAL report, “Creating a Culture of Evidence Use: Lessons from J-PAL’s Government Partnerships in Latin America,” tackles... Read More

Craig McIntosh is a professor of economics in the international relations school at the University of California, San Diego and Co-Chair of J-PAL’s Agriculture sector. He has been a J-PAL affiliate since 2013.

How did you become interested in development economics?

I was a high school exchange student in Nakuru, Kenya for a year in the late eighties. Every one of my brothers, uncles, and cousins in my... Read More