Innovations for Poverty Action

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Innovations for Poverty Action
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Founded 2002
Founder Dean Karlan
Type Research into poverty alleviation and development programs
Focus Program Evaluation in areas such as Microfinance
Public Health
Agriculture
Education
Location
Area served
 Global
Key people
 Dean Karlan, Delia Welsh, Annie Duflo
Website poverty-action.org

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is an American non-profit research and policy organization founded in 2002 by Yale economist Dean Karlan. IPA conducts randomized controlled trials (RCTs), along with other types of quantitative research, to measure the impacts of development programs in sectors including microfinance, education, health, governance, agriculture, social protection, small & medium enterprises, and governance.

History and Mission

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. IPA was founded in 2002 by Dean Karlan, an economist at Yale University,[1][2] originally under the name Development Innovations, as a non-profit organization dedicated to bridging the gap between academia and development policy. IPA is a 501 (c)(3) organization headquartered in New Haven, CT with over 1000 colleagues working on projects in 51 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America.[3]

IPA's website states its mission as follows: Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a research and policy non-profit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA brings together researchers and decision-makers to design, rigorously evaluate, and refine these solutions and their applications, ensuring that the evidence created is used to improve the lives of the world’s poor.[4]

Activities

IPA's principal activities center on conducting impact evaluations of development interventions using a randomized controlled methodology. These evaluations, designed by an academic network of more than 400 researchers from universities such as Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, London School of Economics, MIT, Northwestern University, University of California system, University of Michigan, and Yale, evaluate interventions in the areas of microfinance and enterprise, health, education, agriculture, and community development.[4][5]

As of 2016, IPA has designed and conducted more than 500 evaluations. The organization also works to communicate its findings and ensure that policymakers and practitioners use and apply evidence. IPA's does this through creating evidence, proactive sharing of results, and providing technical assistance to applying solutions at scale.[4]

Partners

IPA works with more than 400 nonprofit organizations, governments, and companies to design programs and conduct evaluations.[4]

Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a close partner of IPA.[6][7] The two organizations share a common mission and take similar methodological approaches to development policy evaluation. 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. IPA and J-PAL attempt to bridge the gap between research and the policy world by creating and disseminating knowledge about what works to policymakers and practitioners around the world.

Other partners

IPA has a number of other partners including the World Bank, various agencies of the United Nations, a number of national and regional governments such as the government of Sierra Leone, and a number of charities that collaborate with IPA in the design and evaluation of their programs, such as Save the Children, Population Services International, One Acre Fund, and Pratham.[8]

Funding

IPA seeks funding from both individuals and foundations.

Foundation and organization funding

The IPA has been funded by a number of foundations and other non-profits. These include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,[9][10][11] Omidyar Network, Citi Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Mulago Foundation,[12] Good Ventures,[13] Ford Foundation, John Templeton Foundation,[14] and many others. A number of universities and think tanks have also funded IPA and its projects, including Harvard University, Imperial College London, Case Western Reserve University, and London School of Economics. Other funders include Google Inc., the World Bank, USAID, and DFID.[15]

Research

IPA's research spans six sectors: microfinance, health, agriculture, education, charitable giving and community development. The results of IPA studies have been published by IPA Research Affiliates in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Econometrica, Science, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, World Development, American Economic Review, Journal of Economics Perspectives, Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Review of Financial Studies, among others.[16]

Method

IPA uses randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in its approach to anti-poverty research. RCTs are primarily known for their application in medical research to isolate the impact of a particular pharmaceutical or treatment from other factors. Though there are critiques to the randomized approach, its use in the social sciences is growing. Critics have included notable development economists such as Angus Deaton and Daron Acemoglu.[17]

Microfinance

IPA performs many evaluations of microfinance programs and products, including microcredit, microsavings, and microinsurance. IPA is part of the Financial Access Initiative (FAI), a consortium launched with the support of a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the goal of increasing knowledge about microfinance and communicating research lessons to a broad spectrum of policy-makers, microfinance institutions, and the public at large.

Some examples of IPA's research on microfinance include examinations of the impact of group liability and commitment savings. Many microcredit programs are offered to groups of women who share "group liability," meaning that all members of the group are responsible for repaying the loans if one of the members defaults. Group liability has been promoted by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus as the best way to ensure high repayment rates.[18] IPA studies conducted in a variety of countries show that switching existing clients to individual liability does not increase default rates, however. Other studies addressing effective ways to promote savings among the poor show promise for commitment savings accounts that limit the owner's access to the funds.[19]

Agriculture

A majority of poor people in the global south rely on agriculture for income. IPA's agriculture research evaluates whether interventions aimed at increasing or protecting farm income are effective. This research has included projects that examine the impact of crop price[20][21] and rainfall insurance, fertilizer use,[22] and access to export markets.[23][24]

External reviews

GiveWell review

In November 2011, charity evaluator GiveWell published a review of IPA[25] and listed it among six standout organizations[26] along with GiveDirectly, KIPP (Houston branch), Nyaya Health, Pratham, and Small Enterprise Foundation but below the two top-rated charities Against Malaria Foundation and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative.

The Life You Can Save

The advocacy and education outreach organization, The Life You Can Save, founded after of the release of the Peter Singer book The Life You Can Save, rates IPA as a trusted charity backed by evidence.[27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ http://www.poverty-action.org/about/what-we-do
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "about" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "about" defined multiple times with different content
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  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=JEP&volume=24&issue=3
  18. ↑ http://poverty-action.org/project/0034 Group vs. Individual Liability in the Philippines
  19. ↑ http://poverty-action.org/project/0029 SEED: A Commitment Savings Product
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ GiveWell official review of IPA
  26. ↑ GiveWell list of top-rated charities
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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