The Evidence Effect: Evidence for more effective social policy in Europe and North America
Generating rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of programs designed to reduce poverty is not just the work of lower and middle-income countries. Countries across Europe and North America are also grappling with how to best tackle deep-rooted and pressing social challenges. These include bolstering social safety nets and better targeting social protection measures, improving access to quality education, helping citizens find employment opportunities, promoting safer communities, and adapting to climate change.
In both regions where we work, expectations of government remain high, though many citizens are frustrated by the failure of social services to keep up with growing challenges. In the United States, recent cuts to research infrastructure and social program funding in the name of government efficiency risk undercutting the capacity of local and national governments to address the issues that people care about. In Europe, continued budgetary pressures as well as increasing demographic challenges mean that many public programs need to do more with less. Crucially, evidence from rigorous evaluations can help government leaders understand what programs and policies actually make a difference and enable them to make an impact even when resources are tight.
Randomized evaluations have already illuminated effective solutions to many pressing challenges
For some of today’s most pressing challenges, we already have effective, evidence-based policy ideas that improve outcomes. Across education, jobs, housing, safety, and social services, rigorous research points to practical approaches that governments can adapt to their local context. In some cases, public leaders have already acted on this evidence and have taken steps to scale up effective approaches, while many more could integrate this evidence into their programs—improving the lives of their constituents.
Learning gaps make it difficult for children from low-income families to catch up, limiting their future opportunities. To improve educational outcomes for low-income and marginalized students, evidence consistently shows that high-impact tutoring can accelerate students’ learning. Several US states have scaled this model, while there is growing interest in Europe in adopting online tutoring models evaluated in Italy and Spain. In France, the education ministry supported the expansion of a parental involvement program after research showed that the program improved student behavior and cut dropout rates. In Bulgaria, eliminating preschool fees increased enrollment among children from marginalized groups. Based on this evidence, eliminating fees has been codified into national law.
Across high-income countries, many workers still lack access to training programs that can lead to well-paying, stable employment. Evaluations show that targeted sectoral employment programs can increase earnings substantially by connecting workers to high-growth industries. The US state of Massachusetts recently awarded US$1M to Per Scholas, an evidence-based sectoral employment program that increased participants’ earnings by 20 percent. In France, the public employment agency’s long-term investment in evaluation has led to refinements in job counseling programs.
Where you live also matters, from accessing quality education to landing good jobs, and too many families remain stuck in neighborhoods with limited opportunities due to high housing costs or systemic barriers. In the United States, the landmark Moving to Opportunity program demonstrated that giving families housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty areas improves long-term economic outcomes, especially for children. This evidence has informed decades of US housing policy, federal investments, and continued research on housing policy innovation.
Crime and safety are pressing concerns across several high-income countries, and policymakers are seeking more effective ways to reduce crime and improve public safety. Behavior change programs in high- and low-income contexts consistently help both law enforcement and members of the public slow down, think differently, and make safer choices in high-stakes situations. Based on this evidence, several US states and cities are recommending that police training include these programs. These programs merit study by European governments looking for similar solutions. In addition, summer youth employment programs, which reduce young people’s criminal justice involvement while improving job readiness, have been scaled up in states and cities across the United States. More government leaders can take advantage of these findings to improve public safety.
Even well-designed programs fail when people can’t access them. Evidence shows that reducing red tape can significantly improve uptake of public benefits, making them both more effective and—by serving more people at a similar cost—more efficient. Studies in France, the United States, and many other contexts have found that nudges in the form of reminders and information can improve take-up, but that some of the largest and most sustainable impacts come from hands-on assistance. Governments could do more to adapt designs to maximize the benefits of public assistance programs.
Using evidence to improve policy requires data infrastructure and collaboration
While high-quality, rigorous evidence is increasingly informing policy, more investment is needed on both sides of the Atlantic to maximize the role evidence can play in policymaking. In the United States, government actors at local, state, and federal levels have made impressive progress towards this aim, but these gains are now under threat. In Europe, government leadership on evidence generation and use is at earlier stages, and a more concerted effort at European and national levels could pay real dividends.
In the United States, actions at the federal level threaten progress made in the bipartisan Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, which laid the groundwork for federal agencies to track data and develop evaluation plans to better inform their programs. More broadly, federal actions to reduce data collection and restrict access, to reduce support for training current and aspiring researchers, and to reduce or eliminate offices and funding dedicated to evaluation weaken the infrastructure necessary to identify effective solutions to the country's most pressing challenges. This is in spite of public support for scientific research: preliminary evidence from J-PAL’s Science for Progress Initiative suggests that the US public is supportive of more, not less, public funding for scientific research and development.
Despite changes at the federal level, many state and local governments in the US continue to champion collaboration with researchers to address their policy priorities. For example, leaders in King County, Washington partner with J-PAL North America to understand the impacts of their policies and adapt programs, including in transportation, housing stability, and climate. State and city environmental agencies from across the country are working with J-PAL North America staff and researchers to identify effective climate action. Continued and increased partnership between researchers and state and local policymakers to generate and apply insights from data and evidence can improve the efficacy and efficiency of government programs.
If the use of rigorous evidence in policymaking in Europe cannot yet match that seen in the US, we have nevertheless seen policymakers’ demand for better evidence growing rapidly. Several national governments have launched policy labs—many with J-PAL Europe’s support—dedicated to building and using evidence in social policy. France’s Innovation, Data and Experiments in Education (IDEE) makes it possible for education researchers to produce actionable evidence for the government. IDEE improves access to administrative data, develops tools and protocols for rigorous research, and builds partnerships that source from teachers and educators themselves the questions that rigorous research can answer. Spain’s Inclusion Policy Lab has already led 32 randomized evaluations of programs ranging from tutoring to job search assistance. Similar efforts are underway in Luxembourg to mainstream more rigorous scientific analysis into the policymaking process, while the European Commission has partnered with the World Bank to foster more evaluation in competitiveness and cohesion policies. To fully leverage these efforts, more cross-European initiatives are needed to promote research that responds to common questions.
Where should we focus efforts now to expand the use of responsive, relevant, and rigorous research on social programs in North America and Europe? We think four things will help: First, invest in research-policy labs that bring together government leaders and researchers in long-term partnerships to generate practical data and evidence, apply lessons, and scale up programs to efficiently deliver services and improve lives for more people. Second, create opportunities for governments at all levels to generate learning agendas, share ideas, and identify pressing questions—and then connect with researchers to address these questions. Third, support multi-site, coordinated research in each region that addresses questions shared by governments at different levels. And fourth, dedicate public and private funding to make this work possible. When budgets are tight and expectations for government performance are high, the time is right to invest in effective, evidence-based policy that improves people’s lives.
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The people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance are among those hardest hit by cuts to foreign aid. With humanitarian funding at historic lows, many essential services are being scaled back or suspended altogether, leading to preventable deaths and putting millions more lives at risk. Restoring as much humanitarian funding as possible is imperative. The reality of funding cuts has forced the humanitarian sector to rapidly “reset” to prioritize life-saving activities and find ways to make the most of limited resources. Encouragingly, evidence is emerging to help pinpoint promising solutions and guide investments that can save lives, protect the most vulnerable, and use humanitarian resources most effectively.
The number of people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance has nearly doubled over the past five years, from almost 170 million in 2020 to more than 300 million today. A combination of factors—including the onset of new and prolonged conflicts and the growing severity of weather-related disasters—have fueled crises that are not only more frequent, but also more complex.
The people caught in these crises are among those hardest hit by cuts to foreign aid. Humanitarian funding is at historic lows, and cuts continue. Just last week, the US House of Representatives approved US$7.9 billion in cuts to foreign aid funding. As a result, many essential services are being scaled back or suspended altogether, leading to preventable deaths and putting millions more lives at risk. Restoring as much humanitarian funding as possible is imperative.
The reality of funding cuts has forced the humanitarian sector to rapidly “reset” to prioritize life-saving activities and find ways to make the most of limited resources. Encouragingly, evidence is emerging to help pinpoint promising solutions and guide investments that can save lives, protect the most vulnerable, and use humanitarian resources most effectively.
Generating evidence even in the hardest places
We already know some things just work. Rapidly mobilizing resources in the wake of crises is critical for ensuring individuals’ most basic human needs are met—including providing timely access to shelter, food, safe drinking water, and healthcare—all of which can prevent emergencies from spiraling into long-term catastrophes.
Still, there’s a lot we don’t know about how to best target and deliver humanitarian aid in rapidly evolving, high-stakes environments in ways that minimize risks and protect civilians from harm. The realities of these settings pose challenges to conducting research safely and ethically. With careful planning and research design, it is possible to conduct impact evaluations of humanitarian assistance that reveal valuable insights even in the most complex environments.
We’ve seen this is possible through a number of our research initiatives. J-PAL’s initiatives on governance and crime and violence have generated impactful insights on effective strategies for building state capacity in fragile settings, responding to and deterring crime and violence, and supporting communities recovering from conflict and disasters. New initiatives are building on this momentum to explore new topics in displacement and humanitarian protection.
And we are not alone in these efforts. A growing number of humanitarian and peacebuilding organizations—including the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, World Food Programme, and others—are investing in randomized evaluations to better understand the impact of their work. Together, these efforts are contributing to a growing global knowledge base that can help shape more effective, evidence-informed humanitarian responses.
What is the evidence telling us?
The power of cash
Getting cash to people quickly, sometimes even before disasters strike, helps families meet basic needs. Humanitarian organizations have long studied how cash and voucher assistance helps households navigate crises, consistently finding it enables families to meet basic needs and improve food security. These findings echo broader research showing that both conditional and unconditional cash transfers can lead to meaningful improvements in well-being, income, and food security for low-income households.
Beyond the lesson that ‘cash works’, how it is delivered also matters. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), both cash and vouchers increased food security and asset ownership, but cash gave households greater flexibility and was more cost-effective. New research is exploring how best to target aid. Early results from a second study in the DRC showed that machine learning and less costly community-based approaches had similar impacts on community acceptance and satisfaction.
Delivering cash to women using digital tools is also proving effective across many settings. In Niger, mobile cash transfers to women were not only more cost-effective than physical cash distribution, but also led to more diverse diets and their children eating more. In Afghanistan, digital payments to female-headed households improved food security and mental wellbeing, with no signs of funds being diverted to unintended groups. Delivering each dollar cost just 6.7 cents—less than half of the World Food Programme’s global average.
Cash is also a powerful tool in responding to increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Rather than reacting after a crisis, offering support in advance, also known as anticipatory action, when weather forecasts suggest an impending climate shock can help families cope. Providing cash transfers ahead of climate shocks in Nepal and Niger improved food security and psychological well-being more than traditional humanitarian aid delivered following the climate shock. Additional research is exploring integrated strategies—such as livelihood interventions, lean season support, and more often delivered in parallel to cash—for boosting community resilience to shocks. Through the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action, partner organizations are also working to improve systems to better identify early warning signs of weather shocks.
Protecting vulnerable people in conflict zones
Cash assistance is a valuable tool in humanitarian response, but it does not address every challenge communities face in crisis. Families still need essential healthcare, education, and, critically, protection from violence, coercion, and abuse.
Addressing these complex issues requires strategies that go beyond cash. J-PAL and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)’s Humanitarian Protection Initiative is supporting some of the first randomized evaluations focused on protection outcomes. For example: in the Central African Republic, the Growing Stronger Together program is testing whether supporting caregivers with parenting tools and tailored family support can prevent child recruitment into armed groups and support those returning home. In Burkina Faso, a pilot project is studying whether training and peer support can protect women entrepreneurs—especially those displaced by conflict—against sexual exploitation.
Early findings from a series of studies we are supporting in the DRC has found that a simple empathy-building program tripled the rate that combatants left an active militia. The program uses weekly perspective-taking exercises that present scenarios prompting combatants to envision themselves in the position of other community members, fostering empathy and reducing civilian abuse.
Supporting long-term recovery and inclusion
Conflict leaves lasting scars–on individuals, communities and institutions. We are therefore also studying ways to improve service delivery after conflict, improve well-being for both displaced and host communities, and foster inclusion between people affected by conflict.
In addition to shifting combatant behaviors in the DRC, perspective-taking programs that encourage people to envision spending a day in another person's shoes are also showing promise for building empathy and more inclusive societies. In Turkey, an interactive classroom program reduced peer violence and improved relationships between Syrian refugees and Turkish students. In Colombia and Hungary, virtual perspective-taking programs similarly improved attitudes and reduced prejudice towards migrants and refugees. These efforts contribute to a broader body of work exploring how to rebuild social cohesion following conflict—including through community reconciliation, mixed sports leagues, and more.
Beyond social integration, we are investigating how to best strengthen livelihoods, self-reliance, and economic inclusion of people experiencing displacement. In Bangladesh, for example, offering Rohingya refugees employment for two months improved psychosocial well-being more than providing cash alone—highlighting that work can have more value than just income. Through our Displaced Livelihoods Initiative with IPA, we are answering a range of additional questions—exploring strategies to boost uptake of mental health services, support refugee business development, and connect displaced people to government services.
Continuing to learn and adapt in crisis settings
The examples above illustrate that randomized evaluations are possible in complex, conflict-affected settings—and are already helping inform more effective humanitarian and development responses. Given how many people’s lives are at stake as humanitarian budgets shrink, this is a critical moment to build on what we’ve learned. Strong partnerships between researchers and implementers are key to ensuring insights are grounded in local realities and translated into action.
Still, there is much more to learn. While the evidence base is expanding—particularly around cash assistance models—important gaps remain. Many humanitarian challenges remain unsolved, and traditional tools may not be enough. First and foremost, funding should be preserved for delivering life-saving services. But even in a constrained funding environment, investing in research and innovation should remain a priority. By generating sharper insights into what works, for whom, under what conditions, and at what cost, we can help communities not only weather today’s crises, but also build stronger and more resilient futures.
The private sector is a fundamental force for driving global prosperity. For corporations and investors, there’s enormous opportunity in low- and middle-income countries’ growing markets and talent. What’s less clear is how to partner most effectively for maximum impact: How can multinationals, local businesses, investors, governments, and catalytic donor capital work together to deliver growth, expand access to higher-income jobs, and scale market-based solutions?
Prior Evidence Effect installments have focused on how to work with governments and nonprofits to scale what works. Of course, the private sector is another fundamental force for driving global prosperity. And for corporations and investors, there’s enormous opportunity in low- and middle-income countries’ growing markets and talent.
What’s less clear is how to partner most effectively for maximum impact: How can multinationals, local businesses, investors, governments, and catalytic donor capital work together to deliver growth, expand access to higher-income jobs, and scale market-based solutions?
Today, a growing body of evidence offers guidance to sharpen the playbook for these partners. But more partnerships between researchers and private sector actors are needed to generate new insights and test what works. At J-PAL, we’re working to foster more partnerships between researchers and private sector implementers to help fill this evidence gap.
For those working at the intersection of development and business innovation, our message is simple: Partnership and learning are essential to maximize both profits and social impact. Together we want to create sustainable solutions that work with markets to improve people’s lives while reducing reliance on traditional aid at a time when those resources are increasingly limited.
Three impactful strategies to get us started: What works to support business growth, better jobs, and market-based solutions
Support small and growing businesses: Small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) create most jobs in LMICs, but face a daunting list of barriers—lack of growth financing, difficulty finding skilled workers and managers, limited access to buyers, and so on. Multinational and domestic firms should consider those strategies that have the highest impact and business returns—for example, improved access to customers has been shown to boost SME profits, productivity, and product quality in different industries. Companies with purchasing power should use such insights to be intentional about buying from places where they actively want to create more growth and impact.
Government agencies like export promotion offices can also apply evidence to improve how they support industry development: Exporting can bring broad benefits beyond short-term growth. When local businesses in low- and middle-income countries connect to export markets, they often create more jobs, pay higher wages, and improve product quality and management practices.
Access to finance and capital is essential for businesses, but doesn’t always lead to transformative growth for the average small and mid-size business. A growing body of research shows that targeting high-potential entrepreneurs with more tailored finance can boost business performance and jobs. Small tweaks to microcredit programs can also improve outcomes across a large client base. Investors and lenders can use such evidence-based insights to refine their product offerings and to incorporate entrepreneur selection methods into their due diligence at low cost, improving impact and reducing risk.
Upskill the workforce: Skills matter, but training outcomes are most successful when tied to actual employers and industry needs, and when they look beyond just technical know-how. In the United States, sectoral employment programs that focus on industries with high pay and/or rising demand for workers have led to lasting income gains and helped firms find talent. Globally, boosting soft skills like communication and teamwork is increasingly proven to make a real difference in lifting the earnings of workers and entrepreneurs by lifting productivity. Business stands to benefit from participating in such programs to access a pool of workforce-ready talent, helping support growth.
Make markets work for people and businesses: Scaling up market-driven solutions has the potential to bring home immense benefits, including helping solve long-standing development challenges—when designed well. Discovering how these programs affect not just the people directly involved, but also the broader community, can help shape more appropriate design choices and avoid unintended harm.
Policymakers and implementers should pilot and test novel market interventions before scaling. In India, emissions markets now improving air quality for 15 million people began with a rigorously tested pilot, showing how evidence-informed market tools can deliver large-scale improvements to people’s lives.
Market tools work best when they reduce risk, build trust, and create incentives for investment across entire supply chains. In agriculture, for example, research is revealing both the benefits and tradeoffs of improving farmers’ access to domestic and international markets, helping decision-makers understand not just who benefits and how these benefits are distributed, but how these programs affect prices, production, and communities.
How can we create the right enablers for evidence-informed private sector impact?
J-PAL is investing in partnerships between researchers and private sector implementers to co-generate new insights and make evidence use more routine in private sector decision-making for impact:
- Our work on private sector engagement helps companies to access J-PAL’s evidence and research in support of their social and environmental goals.
- The UM6P-J-PAL Agricultural Lab for Africa (UJALA) is advancing solutions for small-scale farming and food security on the continent in partnership with OCP Africa, a leading fertilizer company.
- We are partnering with businesses from across industries to meet their impact aims, from decarbonizing aviation to ride-hailing, to improving factory working conditions in the fashion supply chain.
Supporting evidence-informed policy that contributes to long-term growth is also critical. Government-research partnerships helped inform policy decisions like India’s market-based industrial pollution regulation, and are identifying tools to improve public procurement, court systems, and taxation.
Of course, rigorous research on programs, policies, and investments is just one piece of the puzzle. Global trade trends, macroeconomic stability, and social policies to address extreme inequality all shape how much the private sector can contribute to inclusive growth. But evidence on growth and market-shaping policies plays a vital complementary role in these broader conversations. We welcome continued dialogue and collaboration to help keep private sector solutions both innovative and grounded in what delivers real impact.
Governments and local communities are leading the charge on delivering services at scale. When focused on the right things, donor capital—both bilateral and philanthropic—doesn’t have to and generally shouldn’t replace government funding. It should play a catalytic role to spark innovation, spread learning, scale game-changing solutions, and strengthen responsible governments.
Amid climate shocks, conflict, inequality, and fiscal strain, development aid is under scrutiny like never before. Many are asking who will step in to bridge the growing gap in aid. But the best case for foreign assistance is not that aid should do more—it’s that it should do what others can’t.
Governments and local communities are leading the charge on delivering services at scale. When focused on the right things, donor capital—both bilateral and philanthropic—doesn’t have to and generally shouldn’t replace government funding. It should play a catalytic role to spark innovation, spread learning, scale game-changing solutions, and strengthen responsible governments.
We (Alison and Shobhini) have had the privilege of working with many governments, NGOs, social enterprises, and the donors that fund them. Based on this experience, we’re sharing four big ideas for how donors can make investments that catalyze meaningful change.
1. Fund innovations that others can’t.
Foreign assistance and philanthropic funding can act as the risk capital of development innovation—supporting early-stage ideas that governments or the private sector in low- and middle-income countries may be unable or unwilling to fund at early phases. While not all aid is flexible, when donors make room for experimentation and learning, even with the risk of failure, they help uncover solutions that wouldn’t otherwise be found. Without support to surface new ideas, we risk circling back to the same old approaches—while more promising ones never get the chance to prove themselves, let alone reach scale.
In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, for example, increasing farm productivity is key for growth and development, especially for small-scale farmers facing extreme weather that can wipe out an entire season’s worth of crops. Foreign assistance and philanthropic donors supported the development of a flood-tolerant rice variety that boosted yields—but seeds only help if farmers know about them and know how to use them. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Gates Foundation supported evaluations that tested different ways to increase adoption by farmers. These donor investments, from seed development to adoption strategies, turned a lab invention into a real solution for over 35 million farmers.
Pivoting to health, increasing immunization coverage is an extremely cost-effective way to reduce preventable illness and death. We know vaccines work, but making sure people get the vaccines they’re eligible for is the challenge in many countries. The global vaccine alliance, Gavi, recently funded multiple evidence-informed projects to increase the demand for immunizations. J-PAL is working closely with Gavi and their partners on projects to pilot and scale programs in Nigeria, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Lesotho. This innovative approach backed by donors creates the space necessary to test new delivery models and scale up the successful ones.
In education, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) has led to some of the largest learning gains among rigorously evaluated programs worldwide. Developed by the NGO Pratham and government partners, in an iterative process of innovation and evaluation in collaboration with J-PAL, it was refined through repeated testing, retooling, and learning and adaptation through implementation. Several donors joined this journey with trust, provided essential capital, and kept the focus on a shared mission of helping every child master basic skills. TaRL has now reached over 70 million children in India and Africa, improving teacher quality, boosting student learning, and making social spending on education more effective.
2. Invest in learning and public goods for all.
Another unique and catalytic role for donors is in taking a long view by investing in generating knowledge and making it widely available. This can work in a few different ways.
First, donors can invest in portfolios of research to uncover effective approaches to tackle complex development issues. To take a finance analogy, a portfolio approach increases the chances of finding standout solutions while generating broader lessons from many studies across different programs that help advance our understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and why. The UK’s FCDO has long championed this approach, funding portfolios like J-PAL’s Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative and Governance Initiative, among others, that have led to meaningful policy impact.
Second, to generate evidence and make it widely available, donors can shore up knowledge infrastructure, like cost data, research registries, and in-country programs that strengthen research ecosystems. Cost data is essential to comparing the cost-effectiveness of different programs and giving decision-makers the information they need. Research transparency via registries ensures we can weigh any study’s findings against similar research. And building strong research ecosystems enables high-quality research that is shaped by local perspectives.
Third, donors who work on a global or regional level can make lessons widely available and diffuse good ideas. Sharing lessons widely is a key step in turning evidence into action. For instance, J-PAL MENA and UNICEF worked together to share global evidence for Egypt’s policy priorities, and J-PAL South Asia partnered with FCDO to distill evidence-based policy recommendations for India’s federal Ministry of Finance.
3. Bridge the gap from idea to scale.
If we want more bold ideas to reach millions, we must fund the path that gets them there. Many bold ideas reach impact at scale when governments get involved. Their reach and mandate are unmatched—but the journey from pilot to public program is rarely simple. Whether innovations originate inside government or from NGOs or social enterprises, donor funding can play a unique and catalytic role in helping adapt, test, and integrate them into government systems.
One powerful example of donor support enabling government-led scaling is the Graduation approach in India. First pioneered by BRAC, the Graduation approach to tackle extreme poverty was adapted by the Bihar government in partnership with J-PAL South Asia and the NGO Bandhan, reaching thousands of vulnerable families. Donor support made it possible to tailor the program to state systems, build learning loops, provide continuous monitoring to ensure the program was implemented correctly, and troubleshoot implementation challenges. Now the program is set to scale nationwide through India’s Ministry of Rural Development, with ongoing support from ASPIRE at J-PAL South Asia and a large group of partners.
In other contexts, funding partners similarly made major scaling decisions possible. In Indonesia, donor funding was key to rapid evaluation and scaling of improvements to the flagship national rice subsidy program, providing food security for millions. And in Brazil, philanthropy-funded evaluation enabled the broader adoption of an AI writing assistance program for use in public high schools, improving student learning and test scores. In these cases and many more, timely donor investment helped bridge the gap between promising ideas and large-scale, government-led initiatives.
4. Embed in government systems, instead of replacing them.
The most transformative partnerships are co-created with governments. As our colleagues wrote about a few weeks ago, labs or evidence experts embedded in government institutions can serve as centers of innovation that enable continuous experimentation and learning from within the system itself, aligned with national priorities and able to adapt to changes in personnel or administrations.
Embedded models prioritize local leadership, policy alignment, and long-term presence. When donors invest in people, institutions, and trusted relationships—as we’ve seen in J-PAL’s embedded labs from India to Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, and beyond—they help build up governments’ own capabilities to find innovative solutions, deliver, and scale what works.
Foreign assistance and philanthropy are uniquely positioned to support this kind of relatively low-cost, high-impact collaboration. While it’s still important to fund individual programs and support high-quality grassroots organizations, that’s not a substitute for engaging with government systems—especially when aiming for systems change. Working in close partnership in embedded setups takes patience, flexibility, and a tolerance for ambiguity, but the opportunity to influence program design and spending with evidence is worth it.
Our partnership with the Tamil Nadu government in India, now in its tenth year, is a great example of institutionalizing a culture of evidence use through long-term partnerships that sustain political and bureaucratic changes. And SARWA, our Air and Water Lab in India, was launched in 2024 to embed teams within state governments to accelerate evidence-informed solutions to clean air and water.
The call to action is simple and urgent: fund innovation, fund the infrastructure that makes learning possible and locally-driven, fund the bridge from effective idea to scale, and fund the teams working alongside governments to make it happen. Aid can’t and shouldn’t replace what governments do—but it can help them do it more effectively.