If you’re a teacher in the United States with a student loan, you can get $5,000 to $17,500 of your student loans forgiven by the federal government after five consecutive years of teaching in low-income schools. To do this, you’d have to first match the eligibility requirements to your position and your loans: If you took maternity leave does that year count? Does your loan count if you took a deferment while you got your Masters? This is detailed in an 8-page, 4,370 word application, linked towards the bottom of an FAQ page on the federal loan. Then you would have to figure out if your...
Brian Jacob, Damon Jones, Benjamin Keys
February 25, 2019
Media Coverage
February 22, 2019
The Dhaka Tribune recaps the 2019 Financial Inclusion Summit held in Dhaka, where IPA's Financial Inclusion Program Director, Rebecca Rouse, delivered a keynote speech. Rouse discussed how digital cash transfers can be more time and cost effective while ensuring greater accessibility and transparency. She cites IPA evidence on mobile money in Kenya and digital payments in Mexico.
Media Coverage
February 11, 2019
L'Economiste du Faso features evidence from an IPA study on marketing rainfall insurance to the urban relatives of rural farmers to increase uptake for the latter's benefit.
Media Coverage
January 28, 2019
The Star reports on an IPA study that tested the impact of providing rural households in Kenya with bank accounts for the first time. Although the overall use of these accounts was low, they helped some households to be more financially stable and independent.
Media Coverage
January 28, 2019
The Chicago Booth Review features IPA research by our founder Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Benjamin N. Roth on loan forgiveness while highlighting why so many people struggle to escape debt. To test the idea of “debt traps” the researchers paid off the high-interest debt of market vendors in the Philippines and India and found that most of the participants were back in debt within six weeks.
Media Coverage
January 04, 2019
IPA's Financial Inclusion Program Director, Rebecca Rouse, explains why many lower-income Americans live unbanked, without a checking or savings account. They are also more likely to rely on making payments in cash than middle-income and wealthier Americans who increasingly prefer to go cashless.
Media Coverage
January 04, 2019
Multinational banking group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentari (BBVA) features an IPA report demonstrating how modifications in financial product design and services can "nudge" consumers towards improved financial health.
Media Coverage
July 18, 2018
Peru’s Gestión reports on a study in development between that country’s pension fund administrator and IPA to test the impact of matching contributions on enrollment and contributions to pensions among workers in Lima.
Media Coverage
July 18, 2018
Researchers Joshua Blumenstock, Michael Callen, and Tarek Ghani report on their work with IPA testing the effect of new mobile money platforms on long-term savings in Afghanistan. They describe how the nudge of defaulting employees into a savings program, and employer savings matches, increased savings significantly.
James Habyarimana, William Jack
July 02, 2018
Co-written with Alejandra Martinez
In this post, we feature an interview with James Habyarimana, Associate Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy, and William Jack, Vice Provost of Research and Director of gui2de, both at Georgetown University. They conducted a field experiment in Kenya to test whether access to a mobile bank account or a restricted, goal-based account (i.e commitment savings account – which encouraged users to hold onto the money until school expenses were due) could help parents save for their children’s education expenses. Here, they both share...
Media Coverage
June 29, 2018
Peru's El Comercio reports on IPA's work studying the effects of matching contributions on employees saving for retirement. Researchers Researchers from the University of Maryland and Universidad del Pacifico are testing whether matching contributions can encourage informal workers at small firms to save more.
El periodico de Perú, El Comercio, reporta el estudio de IPA sobre los efectos del matching contribution en los ahorros previsionales de los empleados. Investigadores de la U. del Maryland y Universidad del Pacifico están testeando si el matching contribution...
CREDIT:
CONSAR
May 14, 2018
Ver esta página en español
CREDIT: CONSARThe transition from informal, group-based, financial services to formal, individual-based, digital financial services may come about with some unintended consequences, such as the reduction of the positive effects linked to social pressure. A possible remedy to this problem is SMS messages. Beyond their ability to bring financial goals to the “top of mind,” SMS messages can be efficient and effective digital tools to build and maintain the positive effects of social pressure.
There is evidence from a number...
CREDIT:
CONSAR
May 14, 2018
Ver esta página en inglés
CREDIT: CONSARLa transición de un modelo de servicios financieros informales grupales hacia servicios financieros digitales formales e individuales puede traer consigo consecuencias inesperadas, como lo es la reducción de los efectos positivos ligados a la presión social. Una posible respuesta a este problema son los mensajes SMS. Más allá de su habilidad de priorizar y recordar distintas metas financieras, los mensajes SMS pueden ser herramientas eficientes y efectivas para establecer y mantener los efectos positivos ligados a la presión social....
Silvia Prina
April 17, 2018
By Alejandra Martinez and Danielle Moore
Reducing transaction fees and increasing proximity to bank branches seems like a no-brainer for increasing account usage. And predictably enough, a body of research points to transaction costs broadly defined, including fees, distance from a bank branch, difficult administrative processes, as a major barrier to savings. However, for women in the developing world, experimental evidence paints a more complicated picture about the ways in which transaction costs may affect financial inclusion.
In one study, reinforcing conventional...
April 04, 2018
Por Gabriella Wong & Hugo Salas
¿Pueden los mensajes de texto influir en el comportamiento financiero? IPA está trabajando en estrecha colaboración con SBS para descubrir cómo mejorar los puntajes crediticios en Perú.
Según statisticbrain.com, una de las resoluciones de año nuevo más populares de 2017 fue tomar mejores decisiones financieras. Sin embargo, en Perú, casi 1,2 millones de personas (16% de los que tienen alguna deuda con el sistema financiero regulado), están atrasadas en el pago de sus deudas. Esto podría tener implicaciones negativas para su futuro...
