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Improving Lives Through Evidence Trusted Partnerships for Growth | 2021-22

Letter from the Global Executive Director

The past year made it clear that we need to learn to live with this pandemic but not its terrible impact. As vaccines rolled out, field research began to resume and demand soared for evidence-based policy solutions to help people recover from the unprecedented economic shocks of Covid-19.

About J-PAL: The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 260 affiliated researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.

The Year Ahead

Our vision for 2022 builds on a strong foundation to generate more equitable and evidence-based policies for a better world.

Innovative Research: Evaluating cutting-edge policies and programs

Investing in rigorous research is essential to finding solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. Our growing network of researchers work with local partners across the globe to conduct randomized evaluations to identify the most effective approaches to fight poverty and climate change.

Initiative Spotlight: Bringing jobs and opportunity to Brazil

With generous support from a coalition of donors, we launched a new arm of our Jobs and Opportunity Initiative to evaluate innovative strategies that address Brazil's urgent employment challenges.

The King Climate Action Initiative: Solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty

Climate change disproportionately affects people experiencing poverty and threatens to reverse decades of progress in global poverty alleviation. In partnership with King Philanthropies, our King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI) drives evidence generation for effective and equitable climate action.

Policy Engagement: Translating research into action

We identify policy lessons emerging from randomized evaluations, conduct outreach to share those lessons broadly, and build partnerships to inform high-level decision-making and scale-ups.

Capacity Building: Growing a pipeline of researchers generating rigorous, policy-relevant evidence

We invest in building the capacity of government officials, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers worldwide to catalyze data-driven decision-making, equipping professionals with practical tools to become better users and producers of scientific evidence.

Research in Action: Highlights from our research network

Researchers in our network worked closely with governments and NGOs to develop and test innovative solutions to issues exacerbated by the pandemic.

Globally Informed, Locally Grounded: Strategic efforts and key priorities of our regional offices

Our local grounding is critical to the success of our work. Based at leading universities on five continents, J-PAL’s seven regional offices anchor our research, policy engagement, and capacity building work around the world.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Our work is fundamentally better when it is informed by diverse perspectives. We are taking action to address the lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of economics and in our field of work and have made strong progress on the goals we set in 2020.

J-PAL Leadership

Our Board of Directors, which is composed of affiliated professors and senior management, provides overall strategic guidance to J-PAL, our sector programs, and regional offices. The nine-member Executive Committee of the Board makes decisions on behalf of the full Board on an ongoing basis.

Row 1: David Atkin, Abhijit Banerjee, Marianne Bertrand, Chris Blattman, Nicholas Bloom, Emily Breza, Shawn Cole, Bruno Crépon. Row 2: Iqbal Dhaliwal, Joseph Doyle, Oeindrila Dube, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, Alison Fahey, Claudio Ferraz, Laura Feeney. Row 3: Federico Finan, Amy Finkelstein, John Floretta, Francisco Gallego, Michael Greenstone, Marc Gurgand, Rema Hanna, Kelsey Jack. Row 4: Seema Jayachandran, Dean Karlan, Lawrence Katz, Karen Macours, Lina Marliani, Isaac Mbiti, Craig McIntosh, Shobhini Mukerji. Row 5: Karthik Muralidharan, Benjamin A. Olken, Philip Oreopoulos, Adam Osman, Rohini Pande, William Parienté, Paula Pedro, Laura Poswell. Row 6: Vincent Quan, Anna Schrimpf, Tavneet Suri.

Visit our website to learn more about J-PAL.

Credits:

(Cover) Sumit Saraswat | Shutterstock.com, (1) Bastian AS | Shutterstock.com, (2) ivanfolio | Shutterstock.com, (3) Nelson Antoine | Shutterstock.com, (4) KAISARMUDA | Shutterstock.com, (5) Dominic Sansoni/World Bank/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, (6) Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment, (7) Matthieu Alexandre | J-PAL, (8) Shutterstock.com, (9) fivepointsix | Shutterstock.com, (10) J-PAL