J-PAL North America, based at MIT, leads J-PAL’s work in the North America region. J-PAL North America conducts randomized evaluations, builds partnerships for evidence-informed policymaking, and helps partners scale up effective programs.
Our work spans a wide range of sectors including health care, housing, criminal justice, education, and economic mobility. We leverage research by affiliated professors from universities across the continent and a full-time staff of researchers, policy experts, and administrative professionals to generate and disseminate rigorous evidence about which anti-poverty social policies work and why.

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Blog
Researching racial equity: The value of centering lived experience in the research process
In part four of J-PAL North America’s researching racial equity blog series, we sit down with Anthony Barrows, Managing partner and founder of the Center for Behavioral Design and Social Justice, to understand how to center lived experiences throughout the research process and in impact evaluations...

Blog
How anticipating benefit loss shapes family choices
In this post, J-PAL staff sit down with Manasi and Rebecca to discuss the results from their randomized evaluation on the effects of anticipating social safety net benefits on family choices.

Blog
Affiliate spotlight: An interview with Amy Finkelstein on how randomized evaluations provide key insights for her new book on health insurance reform
Amy Finkelstein, co-scientific director of J-PAL North America, co-authored the book We’ve Got You Covered with Liran Einav, which examines the health care system in the United States and proposes how it should be redesigned. In this post, J-PAL staff sat down with Amy to discuss how randomized...

Blog
Understanding the role and importance of spillover effects
A new J-PAL evidence wrap-up highlights three randomized evaluations that consider the spillover effects of three health care interventions. In this post, we discuss what spillover effects are, a summary of the highlighted studies highlighted, and the benefits to policymakers in considering...