Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97), we examine the effects of California's first in the nation government-mandated paid family leave program (CA-PFL) on mothers' and fathers' use of leave during the period surrounding child birth, and on the...

We designed and fielded a survey of New York and Pennsylvania firms to study the impacts of New York's 2018 Paid Family Leave policy on employer outcomes. We match each NY firm to a comparable PA firm and use difference-in-difference models to analyze within-match-pair changes in outcomes. We...

Following the widespread adoption of free primary education, African policymakers are now considering making secondary school free, but little is known about the private and social benefits of free secondary education. We exploit randomized assignment to secondary school scholarships among 2,064...

This paper studies the long-run effects of a "big-push" program providing a large asset transfer to the poorest Indian households. In a randomized controlled trial that follows these households over 10 years, we find positive effects on consumption (1 SD), food security (0.1 SD), income (0.3...

The promise of randomized controlled trials is that evidence gathered through the evaluation of a specific program helps us--possibly after several rounds of fine-tuning and multiple replications in different contexts--to inform policy. However, critics have pointed out that a potential...

Motivated by the quantitative and qualitative analysis of these early attempts, we adapted the approach and designed large-scale experiments in the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to test two new scale-up models. In Haryana, teachers received support from government resource persons trained...

Iron deficiency anemia is frequent among the poor worldwide. While it can be prevented with the appropriate supplement or food fortification, these programs often do not consistently reach the poorest. This paper reports on the impact of a potential strategy to address iron deficiency anemia in...

A seven-year randomized evaluation suggests education subsidies reduce adolescent girls' dropout, pregnancy, and marriage but not sexually transmitted infection (STI). The government's HIV curriculum, which stresses abstinence until marriage, does not reduce pregnancy or STI. Both programs...

We examine whether the benefits of high school work experience have changed over the last 20 years by comparing effects for the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Our main specifications suggest that the future wage benefits of working 20 hours per week in the...

This paper reports the results from a randomized evaluation of a microcredit program introduced in rural areas of Morocco starting in 2006 by Al Amana, the country's largest microfinance institution. Al Amana was the only MFI operating in the study areas during the evaluation period. Thirteen...