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It has been easy to dismiss efforts to raise the prospects of the world’s poorest as an abject failure. The United Nations reported 712 million people living in extreme poverty in 2022, 23 million more than in 2019. However, Foreign aid was helping the world’s poorest escape misery.

A market for tradable pollution permits in India increased compliance with emissions restrictions, reduced particulate matter emissions, and made pollution abatement more affordable.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) recently published a brief that identifies six development programs that save lives, reduce disease, and help the poorest people in the world transition out of extreme poverty.

In this podcast, Robert D. Metcalfe shares key findings on trends in indoor air quality, how people change their behavior when made aware of pollution levels in their homes, and the potential benefits and trade-offs of government subsidies for technologies that monitor indoor air quality. Metcalfe...

Around the world, low immunizations rates for children are a persistent problem. Now, an experiment conducted in India shows that an inexpensive combination of methods, including text reminders and small financial incentives, has a major impact on immunization.

In many low- and middle-income countries, it is commonly believed that weak state and regulatory capacities limit the ability to reduce pollution and mitigate climate impact. Researchers developed a low-cost intervention to improve the energy efficiency of zigzag kilns and conducted a randomized...

The world’s first-ever market for trading in particulate matter emissions—launched in Gujarat’s Surat in 2019 through partnerships with the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)—has reduced pollution by 20-30% among participating industries...

In this special episode of The India Briefing, Nobel Laureate and development economist Esther Duflo joins hosts Mukulika Banerjee and Pya Tiwari for a wide-ranging conversation on poverty, inequality, and evidence-based policymaking in India.