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News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

People wearing masks stand in line to receive food from police

Taking an evidence-based approach to governance policy in the face of COVID-19

Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development while addressing the enormous challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic requires identifying, implementing, and scaling the most effective social policies and programs. Too often, however, this key principle—effectiveness—can get lost amid other...
A teacher sits on the ground in a circle of children. She is demonstrating to a student.

Foundational learning first: a joint statement on education in the time of COVID-19

By
More than one billion students have been out of school due to COVID-19. Data from past crises suggest large and lasting impacts on education, especially girls’ re-enrollment and learning loss. For this reason, J-PAL and partners have recently released a joint statement on the importance of focusing...
A cityscape crowded with apartment buildings.

Building research partnerships to create moves to opportunity

J-PAL affiliate and Director of Opportunity Insights Raj Chetty reflects on partnering with J-PAL North America to evaluate an intervention called Creating Moves to Opportunity, which aims to help lower-income families in the United States to move to higher-opportunity areas.
Masai herders stand among a herd of goats

Pastoralism in the COVID-19 era

By
  • Philemon Chelanga
  • Indira Tirumala
  • Elizabeth Lyons
Pastoralism is a livestock production system that has been carried out for millennia in some of the world’s harshest environments, including the vast arid of East Africa. This post, written by Philemon Chelanga, Indira Tirumala, and CEGA affiliated professor Elizabeth Lyons, explains how the...
A child wearing a mask looks directly up at the camera

Adapting to learning needs in the wake of COVID-19 using data and evidence

By
  • Molly Curtiss
A conversation with TaRL Africa, J-PAL, and the Ministry of National Education of Côte d’Ivoire. Originally posted by the Brookings Institute.
Cardboard boxes filled with paper files

Pandemic provides unprecedented opportunities to take justice online

By
  • Joyce Sadka
  • Isabel Mejía Fontanot
Labor courts in Mexico and many other low- and middle-income countries often provide low quality services. Since 2015, we have partnered with the Mexico City Labor Court, one of the largest courts dealing with firing cases in Latin America, to innovate in improving the court’s functioning.
Workers in a factory

Announcing joint partnership to launch the Morocco Employment Lab

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J-PAL and Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard are partnering with the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Morocco Agency to launch the Morocco Employment Lab.
parent child digital report

How filling in the information gaps can increase student learning

Educators around the world are currently engaging in many creative strategies to encourage learning despite closed schools, social distancing policies, and other COVID-imposed obstacles to traditional classroom-based learning. This blog summarizes the key takeaway messages from J-PAL’s new policy...