From the Executive Director

J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has worked hard alongside policymakers to confront the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in a context of high inequality. The region has lost more than 1.5 million lives and faces the long-term consequences of 170 million students out of school, 26 million jobs lost, and critical reductions in female labor force participation.

Our team went above and beyond to ensure that policy was informed by evidence. In 2021, we launched timely research for Covid-19 response, conducted training programs remotely, and developed new ways to virtually communicate with partners. We supported our affiliates in conducting randomized evaluations on topics in education and social protection and joined together to get evidence from these studies into policymakers’ hands.

Over the next few years, we will work with our rapidly growing network of LAC-based researchers to help students catch up and plan for their futures, promote women’s economic agency, and support workers in accessing better labor opportunities. We will also use evidence to shape the conversation on critical issues such as climate change, misinformation, trust in government, diversity, and crime and violence reduction. And as always, we will continue to engage with governments to establish new evidence-to-policy partnerships and reinforce existing ones.

With more than a decade of experience shaping research and policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, we are uniquely prepared to help governments and civil society plan for the world post-Covid-19. We look forward to 2022 and thank our partners for the trust they place in us.

@paulagpedro | @JPAL_LAC

J-PAL LAC Leadership

The Year in Review

Launched the Jobs and Opportunities Initiative Brazil (JOI Brazil)

With support from Fundação Arymax, B3 Social, Potencia Ventures, and the IDB, we launched JOI Brazil to evaluate innovative strategies that address the country's employment challenges. Over the next years, we will fund influential research focused on reducing inequality among job opportunities and helping workers find better jobs.

Adapted effective educational solutions to the LAC context

We leveraged ten years’ worth of education research in the LAC region to address, together with governments, worsened educational outcomes and widened socioeconomic gaps resulting from Covid-19. This includes:

1. Adapting and testing a virtual, customizable edutainment intervention emphasizing the returns to education with over 20,000 students in Chile in partnership with the Ministry of Education.
2. Advising governments and organizations in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay to adapt and pilot the successful Tutoring Online Project to support students lagging behind in school.

Increased diversity in our Diploma program

Our Spanish-language Diploma on impact evaluation is a collaboration with our host in the region, PUC Chile, to prepare students to generate and use evidence in their work. In 2021 classes were offered exclusively online for the first time, enabling participants from a record number of countries to engage. Generous support from Fundación Colunga, Fundación Olivo, Fundación Mustakis, and Fundación San Carlos de Maipo allowed us to provide scholarships to one-third of the cohort. Together, these two factors allowed for greater diversity in the classroom.

Launched partnership with Insper to host our activities in Brazil

Our partnership with Insper, a leading Brazilian college, will facilitate the implementation of randomized evaluations and policy engagement. In close coordination with our regional office at UC Chile, Insper will provide J-PAL LAC with office space and grant administration, and will support events, matchmaking activities, and running research projects.

The Year Ahead

Build government partnerships in Brazil and Mexico

We will leverage recent successes to deepen our engagements in Brazil and Mexico. In Brazil, we will focus on jobs and economic opportunity, with a special focus on women—a top priority of many cities and state governments. In Mexico, we will deepen partnerships around gender empowerment and gender-based violence across several levels of government.

Help students catch up post-Covid

We look forward to collaborating with partners to test the impact of information customization for students, evaluating different models for tutoring and piloting technologies that help teachers adapt to heterogeneous learning levels post-Covid-19.

Build a more diverse economics profession

We will support talented researchers from Latin America and the Caribbean in incubating and implementing randomized evaluations. We are also committed to systematic attention to diversity in our teams. Finally, we aim to support our staff interested in careers in economics by providing mentorship and collaborating with nascent organizations working towards greater diversity in economics, such as REPP in Brazil and EconThaki in Peru.

Learn more about J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean