Blog

Artificial intelligence promises to help governments meet challenges and deliver better for citizens. AI tools could be leveraged at multiple points in the public financial management cycle—from collecting revenue through taxation, to spending those revenues on public services. They could also make...

High-quality early childhood education is essential. Randomized evaluations show that simple, low-cost activities, like reading, singing, and playing, can boost children’s cognitive, language, social, and motor skills. How can we deliver high-quality preschool education at scale?

In Belém, Brazil, where the Amazon rivers converge and forests help regulate the earth’s temperature, COP30 last month was a unique summit and call to action. Climate change is not just an environmental crisis—it is a development crisis. Low-income people in low- and middle-income countries are...

In October 2025, Cape Town hosted the CGIAR Gender in Food, Land, and Water Systems Conference, bringing together researchers, policymakers, and donors to chart actions for closing gender gaps in agriculture. J-PAL staff attended and presented in one of the key plenaries over the three days.

AI has the potential to improve access to and quality of health care. However, evidence on the real-world impacts of AI solutions on providers and patients is scarce. Closing these evidence gaps is key to ensuring policymakers can responsibly scale AI that supports healthcare workers and patients.

Can business training programs help rural microentrepreneurs thrive? A new evaluation of Trafkintunkim, a rural entrepreneurship training program in southern Chile, finds that participants improved their business practices and household incomes. Gains were strongest for women and for entrepreneurs...

On October 8, J-PAL Southeast Asia hosted a workshop gathering several of Indonesia’s zakat management organizations (Organisasi Pengelola Zakat or OPZ) to explore how zakat, faith-based charitable funds, can further support poverty alleviation through the Graduation approach. In this blog we...

Recent findings from the Baby's First Years study reveal mixed impacts: while cash support helped families and children in some narrow ways, it did not have broad effects across other aspects of family life. Several factors should be considered when interpreting these results.