An op-ed in the Washington Post discusses the potential for unconditional cash transfers, referring to an IPA study of GiveDirectly's cash grant program, explaining how the program not only benefitted recipients but the larger community as a whole.
Vox's Future Perfect reflects on the potential benefits of unconditional cash transfers with the new results of an IPA evaluation of the effects of GiveDirectly's distribution of cash in rural Kenya on the area's broader economy.
NPR's Morning Edition covers the broader impact of cash grant programs, focusing on an IPA study of GiveDirectly's work. Researcher Ted Miguel explains how distributing cash to households in rural Kenya raised total economic activity in the area.
L'Economiste du Faso covers an IPA co-hosted training on the evaluation of youth employment programs in the Sahel. IPA co-organized the training with the International Labour Organization (ILO), Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), and Luxembourg Aid and Development from November 18-19 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The Economist writes on the broader impact of cash transfers, citing an IPA study of GiveDirectly's program in rural Kenya where unconditional cash grants raised consumption—both for the households who received them and their neighbors— and also raised wages and local GDP.
Diario Correo writes on Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo—winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics along with Michael Kremer— and their connection to a six-country evaluation of the Ultra-Poor Graduation model that included work in Peru.
"If tomorrow a drug was developed that transformed the lives of the world’s extreme poor as efficiently as direct cash transfers, it would be considered a revolution in the world of aid."
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Francisco Toro writes on the impact of direct cash transfers compared to other poverty reduction tools. He cites IPA's evaluation of GiveDirectly's work in Kenya, as well as our work reviewing a range of interventions.
PBS NewsHour reported from Ethiopia on IPA's research examining the Ultra-Poor Graduation model, which targets the world's poorest. Tedros Kesete explains the data collection process, and economists Dean Karlan & Rachel Glennerster explain why the coordinated set of studies also tested the model in Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru and how good data can help us identify the most effective poverty solutions.
In Foreign Policy, Yale's Mushfiq Mobarak writes on how to address seasonal poverty, including his and others' work with IPA on: seasonal migration in Bangladesh, public works programs in Malawi, microfranchising in Kenya, and seasonal loans to farmers in Kenya.
In an op-ed, Daily Nation discusses an ongoing IPA evaluation, in partnership with GiveDirectly, on the effects of universal basic income (UBI) in rural Kenya.
Researchers David Evans and Fei Yuan review evidence from around the world showing that there is no need to focus just on girls’ education. Most interventions that improve education for girls also help boys. They cite an IPA study in Kenya in which providing scholarships to high-performing sixth-grade girls helped classroom performance in general, not just for girls.
In an interview with Freakonomics, IPA founder Dean Karlan and James Choi discuss their work (completed with fellow researcher Gharad Bryan) on an IPA evaluation of a Christian health and livelihood training program in the Philippines. The study tested two versions of the program, one with and one without a religious messaging component. While only the latter raised incomes, it also reduced participants' perception of their relative economic status in their community.
The Daily Guardian reports on the launch of a graduation program in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and BRAC, have partnered on the program which will be evaluated in an IPA randomized controlled trial.
Vox's Future Perfect writes on the effects of cash transfers compared to holistic "graduation" programs as well as how both approaches can be applied in conjunction with one another. Vox cites IPA research conducted in Uganda as well as a large-scale IPA study tested in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru.
Sweden's Sveriges Radio reports on an IPA study on cash benchmarking in Rwanda as both a news and feature piece. The evaluation compared how a standard WASH, hygiene, and nutrition program compares to just giving people cash, measuring impacts on indicators of poverty and malnutrition. (Note: in Swedish).
