Improving the Impact per Dollar of USAID Programming: The Power of Cost-Effectiveness Evidence to Improve Lives

Across several recent administrations, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has taken critical steps to strengthen the role of evidence in Agency programming, including introducing its first Evaluation Policy and implementing requirements of the bipartisan Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act. More recently, the Agency focused new attention on cost-effectiveness to improve the impact per dollar of its programming, such as revising the Agency’s operational policy related to planning, delivering, assessing, and adapting development programming to reflect this greater focus on cost-effectiveness. This focus on cost-effectiveness enables the Agency to identify and scale evidence-based interventions that are consistently shown to deliver greater impact per dollar on specific outcomes than other approaches—for example, “direct monetary transfers” to individuals, households, and small businesses to achieve key development outcomes or targeted instruction and structured pedagogy to advance foundational literacy and numeracy.  

Join the Center for Global Development and USAID to celebrate these strides in cost-effective programming and to launch USAID’s first-ever Position Paper on Cost-Effectiveness and Position Paper on Direct Monetary Transfers, two new Agency policy documents. USAID Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming Isobel Coleman will deliver a keynote address on cost-effectiveness to improve the lives of the people and communities around the world that the Agency serves. Following her remarks, a distinguished panel of speakers will highlight examples of cost-effectiveness in practice.