Innovations for Poverty Action

Innovations for Poverty Action

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	New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America
Area served	global
Key people	Dean Karlan, Delia Welsh, Annie Duflo
Website	poverty-action.org

Innovations for Poverty Action is an American non-profit 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, charitable giving and community development.

History and Mission

IPA was founded in 2002 by Dean Karlan, an economist at Yale University.^[1][2] originally under the name Development Innovations. It is currently headquartered in New Haven, CT and has 600 employees working on projects in 48 countries.^[3]

IPA's website states its mission as follows: Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a nonprofit organization that creates and evaluates solutions to social and development problems, and works to scale up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors, and donors.^[4]

Activities

IPA's principal activities center on conducting impact evaluations of development interventions using a randomized controlled methodology. These evaluations, designed by academics at 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, community development, and charitable giving.^[4][5] The organization also undertakes activities to communicate its research findings in order to influence policymaker and donor decisions. Additionally, IPA participates in efforts to scale up interventions that its research has proven effective.

Partners

IPA works with other research organizations, for-profit businesses, and nonprofit institutions to design programs and run evaluations.

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. A number of J-PAL Affiliates are also IPA Research Affiliates or IPA Research Network Members. Innovations for Poverty Action 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 Acumen Fund, 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 are cooperating with IPA in the evaluation of their programs, such as Save the Children, Population Services International, and Pratham.^[8]

Funding

IPA seeks funding from both individuals and foundations. It seeks funding for two separate funds: the IPA General Fund that is used for all activities including research and scaling-up, and the Proven Impact Fund, which is for funding the scaling-up of those programs that have been proven successful in initial studies.^[9]

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,^[10][11][12] Omidyar Network, Mulago Foundation,^[13] Good Ventures,^[14] Ford Foundation, John Templeton Foundation,^[15] 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, London School of Economics, and the Brookings Institution. Other funders include Google Inc. and the World Bank.^[16]

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, 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.

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.

See also

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
• Financial Access Initiative
• More Than Good Intentions

References

External links

• Official website