Nature on IPA Universal Basic Income in Kenya
Media Coverage
July 18, 2018

Nature's news section covers an evaluation in Kenya conducted by IPA and GiveDirectly on the effects of a universal basic income (UBI), a type of unconditional cash transfer that is enough to meet basic needs, and delivered to everyone within a community. Researchers are monitoring the short and long-term effects of UBI as well as their effect on factors including economic status, time use, risk-taking, and gender relations.
BBC Covers IPA and Give Directly's Universal Basic Income Evaluation in Kenya
Media Coverage
April 30, 2018

BBC News highlights an ongoing IPA study, in partnership with GiveDirectly, evaluating the effects of universal basic income (UBI) in rural Kenya.
Village Enterprise Representative Blogs on IPA Collaboration
Media Coverage
April 30, 2018

Dianne Calvi of Village Enterprise writes on NextBillion about their work with IPA to evaluate their ultra-poor graduation programming in Uganda. Nathanael Goldberg, director of IPA’s Social Protection program, explained how studies like these can help inform the development of scalable and streamlined programming.
Small Cash Grants Might Not Work as Well as We Think
Media Coverage
March 28, 2018

Mother Jones covers recent discussion on the long term effects of cash transfers, including Chris Blattman's reflections on a study he and other IPA-affiliated researchers conducted with IPA in Uganda.
Fighting poverty through entrepreneurship training
Media Coverage
March 19, 2018

The Daily Monitor covers the personal impact of Village Enterprise’s graduation-style program in Uganda, which provides poor households with cash transfers, mentorship, training, and support for the formation of businesses and savings groups over a one-year period. Village Enterprise and IPA Uganda partnered with researchers to conduct a randomized evaluation of this program. 
IPA Research on Values Training Featured in the New York Times
Media Coverage
March 01, 2018

In an op-ed in the New York Times, David Leonhardt discusses the findings of IPA's evaluation of a Christian business training program in the Philippines. Leonhardt explores the results' implications with project researcher and IPA founder Dean Karlan, who concludes that the "findings are 'cautiously positive' for the power of religion." 

The evaluation found that a program that combined health and livelihood training with sessions on religious values improved participants' incomes while a health and livelihood training alone did not. However, the religious program decreased...
Devex on IPA's Right-Fit Monitoring and Evaluation Program
Media Coverage
February 26, 2018

DevEx speaks with IPA's Annie Duflo, Nathanael Golberg, Loïc Watine, and Dean Karlan about when an organization should or shouldn't consider a randomized control trial. They discuss good monitoring and evaluation principles laid out IPA's new Goldilocks Initiative, designed to help organizations find appropriately sized M&E strategies.
The Economist Covers IPA Research on Values Training
Media Coverage
February 26, 2018

 

The Economist reports on IPA's evaluation of a Christian business training program in the Philippines. Researchers evaluated the program for the poor, which provided health and business training, both with and without the religious messaging component. The evaluation showed that only the version with the religious component raised incomes and increased expressions of religious belief. However, it also reduced paritcipants' perception of their relative economic status in their community. 
Devex on New Results on the Ultrapoor Graduation Model
Media Coverage
February 20, 2018

Devex reports on the new six-arm study of the ultrapoor graudation model in Uganda. Comparing to several other options, the graduation model was effective at helping the poorest of the poor and relatively cost-efficient. The program will be at the center of a new multi-million dollar development impact bond.
IPA Seasonal Migration Research Cited in Bloomberg
Media Coverage
January 04, 2018

In Bloomberg, Noah Smith cites IPA's research on seasonal migration in Bangladesh in an op-ed arguing for policies that encourage worker mobility. 
No Lean Season Featured by NPR's Goats and Soda
Media Coverage
December 28, 2017

NPR's Goats and Soda section has a feature about No Lean Season—a program that offers small, low-interest cash loans for transportation costs to help members of rural poor households get from their farms to cities to find their own temporary employment during the agricultural lean season. In the feature, researcher Mushfiq Mobarak discusses his inspiration for studying the idea and the process that has led to the program's expansion since IPA initially tested the idea. This year, GiveWell added No Lean Season to their list of top charities. 
Focus group discussion
"Modern Men" — Harnessing the Telecommunication Boom to Reduce Intimate Partner Violence
September 27, 2017

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Medium.

Over the last several months, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the IRC’s Airbel Center have been searching for innovative methods and new engagement tools to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) in Liberia. We interviewed a sample of Monrovian residents, including community and religious leaders, and held informal discussions in bars and on the street. Many men and women in Liberia described a man’s key responsibility in a relationship as “someone who provides financially for the home.” Failing to meet this...
Empowering Girls in Rural Bangladesh
Encouraging Mixed Methods in Impact Evaluations on Women’s Empowerment: An Economist’s Perspective
Sarah Baird
September 25, 2017

This is the second in a series of blog posts summarizing the discussions from a May 2017 researcher gathering on measuring women’s empowerment in impact evaluations. Read the first post on household decision-making power here.

Painting a full picture of women’s empowerment in impact evaluations using surveys alone can be challenging. Qualitative methods can help researchers better understand a program’s impact on women’s lived experience and identify reasons why a program worked or didn’t work, but economists rarely have incentives to incorporate robust qualitative methods into...
Is It Time to Rethink How We Measure Women’s Household Decision-Making Power in Impact Evaluation?
Rachel Glennerster
September 06, 2017

This is the first in a series of blog posts summarizing the discussions from a researcher gathering on measuring women’s empowerment in impact evaluations co-hosted by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the AbdulLatif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in May 2017.

 

By Rachel Glennerster and Claire Walsh

One of the first rules of thumb you learn about developing survey questions is that they should be specific and time-bound. In other words, it’s better if a question is about a specific event or behavior rather than a vague idea so respondents are less likely to...
In Vox, an open letter to Bill Gates
Media Coverage
March 14, 2017

PI Chris Blattman published an open letter to Bill Gates in Vox.com, citing several IPA studies. Gates has a plan to boost chicken ownership in sub-Saharan Africa from five to 30 percent. But we know from rigorous randomized controlled trials that cash is cheap, effective, and easy to deliver. Blattman urges Gates to promote a randomized controlled trial to determine which is the most effective and efficient way to help the poor.

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