The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence.

History

J-PAL was founded in 2003 by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan (J-PAL 2020). Rachel Glennerster was its Executive Director between 2004 and 2017. In 2019, Banerjee and Duflo, together with Michael Kremer, were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their research involving randomized controlled trials in social science (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2019).

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a close partner of J-PAL.

Evaluation

In January 2019, GiveWell recommended a $1 million grant—via the Global Health and Development Fund—to Innovation in Government Initiative (IGI), a grantmaking entity that sits within J-PAL (GiveWell 2019).

As of December 2021, J-PAL has received $200,000 in grants from Open Philanthropy (Open Philanthropy 2017; Open Philanthropy 2021).