Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab


The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty, and builds partnerships with governments, NGOs, donors, and others to generate new research, share knowledge, and scale up effective programs. As of 2018, more than 400 million people have been reached by scale-ups of programs found to be effective by J-PAL affiliates’ research.

History and mission

J-PAL was founded in 2003 as the "Poverty Action Lab" by professors Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan. J-PAL was established to support randomized evaluations measuring interventions against poverty on topics ranging from agriculture and health to governance and education. The Lab was renamed in honor of Sheikh Abdul Latif Jameel when his son, MIT alumnus Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, supported it with three major endowments in 2005. He further endowed its activities in 2009.
A 2010 Business Week story, "The Pragmatic Rebels," termed J-PAL's approach that of "a new breed of skeptical empiricists committed to assiduous testing and tangible results". According to Nicolas Kristof, J-PAL has led a "revolution in evaluation"; its philosophy and methods are part of a larger trend towards "applying behavioral economics to global development." In his review of Banerjee and Duflo's book Poor Economics, Bill Gates wrote: "To me, what's really great about J-PAL is that it's producing scientific evidence that can help make our anti-poverty efforts more effective."

Activities

Although J-PAL was founded as a research center, its activities have expanded to encompass three areas: impact evaluations, policy outreach, and capacity building.
To date, a network of over 170 J-PAL affiliated professors has carried out more than 948 evaluations in 81 countries, and J-PAL has trained over 1,500 people in impact evaluation. These evaluations include everything from an analysis of the effectiveness of glasses in China in improving student test scores to a study on the value of deworming to improve student attendance and academic performance in Kenya. This work, by Michael Kremer and Edward Miguel, provided the impetus for the Deworm the World initiative, which has since reached over 20 million children. Another J-PAL researcher, Nava Ashraf, recently completed work on innovative channels to ease the load of overburdened health care workers in Zambia. An evaluation in India by J-PAL Directors Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, and Rachel Glennerster, together with Dhruva Kothari, found that full immunization rates increased dramatically with the introduction of small incentives for parents, coupled with reliable services at convenient mobile clinics.
J-PAL supports randomized evaluations through its 16 research initiatives, which enable innovative research that fills critical knowledge gaps and contributes to global understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and why. In 2019, J-PAL launched the , which provides funding and technical guidance to help researchers and data providers access and analyze large administrative datasets, informing decision-making and leading to less expensive and faster randomized evaluations. Initial partnerships are in progress with state governments in the United States and in India. Also in 2019, J-PAL relaunched its Government Partnership Initiative as the Innovation in Government Initiative, representing renewed efforts to scale up effective programs to reach more people. Governments will be able to apply for funding under IGI to conduct rigorous impact evaluations and to take evidence-based policies and programs to scale.
J-PAL and , with the support of multiple donors and local partners, are working together to scale up in countries across Africa and Latin America. The expansion of this program has the potential to help millions of children learn basic reading and math skills, preparing them for future education and a lifetime of higher earnings.
As part of its capacity-building efforts, J-PAL offers courses to help implementers, policymakers, and researchers become better producers and users of evidence and equip learners worldwide with skills in data analysis and economics. Offerings include open enrollment courses, custom workshops, online courses, and trainings for research staff. J-PAL has created an online MicroMasters credential in cooperation with MITx and a Diploma in Impact Evaluation with Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In 2019, J-PAL launched the blended MIT Master’s in Data, Economics, and Development Policy, combining online learning with residential education at MIT and intensive internships. The master’s program will equip outstanding students with the skills they need to create evidence-based change in their communities.

Structure

J-PAL's headquarters is a center within the Economics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with regional offices in Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia that are hosted by a local university:
J-PAL is organized both by these regional offices and by research themes called sector programs. Programs are led by members of the organization's board of directors, and cover eight areas:
J-PAL is currently led by Professors , and as Faculty Directors and as the Global Executive Director. J-PAL's sets the vision and strategy for the organization and includes the Global Directors and Executive Director, Regional Scientific Directors and Executive Directors, and Chairs of the Sector Programs. In 2019, J-PAL co-founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and long time research affiliate Michael Kremer were awarded the Nobel prize in economics “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”

Partnerships

is a close partner of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. The two organizations share a common mission and take similar methodological approaches to development policy evaluation, though J-PAL works through universities and makes use of academic resources, while IPA, as a nonprofit, operates through country offices. Both organizations have pioneered the use of randomized evaluations to study the effectiveness of development interventions worldwide and have collaborated extensively on field studies involving randomized evaluations. A number of J-PAL Affiliates are also IPA Research Affiliates or IPA Research Network Members. The work of both organizations is featured in the popular press books More Than Good Intentions by Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel, and in Banerjee and Duflo's 2011 book, Poor Economics, which was chosen as the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
Other J-PAL research partners include the Centre for Micro Finance, the Center for International Development's Micro-Development Initiative, the Center of Evaluation for Global Action, Ideas 42, Educate!, and the Small Enterprise Finance Center.

Experiments and findings in India

J-PAL has conducted extensive work in India. Below are some examples of experiments and findings in India: