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Schools are stepping up efforts to combat chronic absenteeism, a major factor in plummeting test scores and other problems educators have faced with students since the pandemic.

Chronic absenteeism — commonly defined as missing more than 10 percent of school days — has affected millions of students and caught the attention of the White House, which has said the issue calls for an “all-hands-an-deck approach.”

For years now, GiveDirectly has been conducting the world’s largest test of basic income: It is giving around 6,000 people in rural Kenya a little more than $20 a month, every month, starting in 2016 and going until 2028. Tens of thousands more people are getting shorter-term or differently...

Future Perfect 50: After founding GiveDirectly, Niehaus is pushing the frontiers of social science research.

Program aims to prevent low-income older adults from becoming homeless.

Future Perfect 50: The economist aims to kickstart the slumping rate of progress by reforming the science of science.

This global industry has been the first to demonstrate it can successfully boost the fortunes of the underprivileged, but is it actually efficient?