Researchers partnered with five job centers to test whether health counseling targeted at youth increased insurance coverage and health care use, leading to better health and employment outcomes. Encouraging youth to meet with a social worker and with a physician increased enrollment in the public universal health insurance, but did not significantly affect youth’s understanding of their rights and of the insurance reimbursement procedures. The program almost doubled the number of youth that consulted a psychologist and increased the time spent participating in vocational training programs.

Researchers evaluated the impact of mailings that informed people with a record of felony conviction of their eligibility to vote on political participation. The mailing increased political participation, particularly among individuals that were active voters prior to incarceration.

Researchers present results from six randomized control trials of an integrated approach to improve livelihoods among the very poor. The impact on the poor households lasted at least a year after all implementation ended.

Kenya, East Africa's largest economy, is struggling with an ageing energy infrastructure and low connectivity to the power grid. William Jack and affiliate Tavneet Suri (MIT) study the impact of off-grid solar power on small retailers in Nairobi.

In India, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test how the provision of rainfall index insurance affected farmer production decisions, focusing on the decision to grow cash crops. They found that providing insurance led farmers to shift production towards higher-risk, higher-return cash crops.

Researchers evaluated the effect of randomly offering varied wages to bean-sorting workers in rural Malawi. While offering higher wages caused workers to increase their productivity, it did not attract more productive workers.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of offering interest-paying mobile money saving accounts to farmers, and in some cases farmers’ friends, on their financial behavior such as agricultural investment. Providing farmers access to interest-bearing mobile savings accounts increased both the amount of money they saved using these accounts and the likelihood they invested in fertilizer, while providing farmer’s closest farming friends the same incentivized mobile money accounts did not increase savings.

International remittances are an important financial tool for many developing countries, and many organizations offer financial products or financial education services to help families manage the remittances they receive. Researchers provided families with financial products and financial education in the Philippines to test whether the two services influenced each other.

Fertilizer use has been promoted to boost agricultural productivity and increase farmers’ yields and income. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation among rice farmers in Bangladesh to evaluate the impact of providing leaf color charts and basic training on the quantity and timing of fertilizer use and crop yields. Fertilizer use declined while yield moderately increased for farmers.

In Zambia, researchers examined the impact of access to seasonal credit on farming households’ consumption, labor allocation, and agricultural output. The results suggest that access to food and cash loans during the lean season increased agricultural output and consumption, decreased off-farm labor, and increased local wages.

Informal healthcare workers with little to no training provide more than 70 percent of all primary care in rural India. In this study, researchers evaluated the impact of a nine-month training...