Using Evidence to Inform Social Policy in the Philippines in the Time of COVID-19: RECOVR Survey Reveals Priorities for Economic Recovery COVID-19’s effects are global, but local contexts characterize the virus’s specific impacts and residents’ concerns. In the Philippines, after surveying local residents, IPA found that food security, financial resilience, and educational progress...

RECOVR Roundup: Social Protection in the Time of COVID-19 In our new RECOVR Roundup series, we are sharing new findings and analysis from the RECOVR Research Hub—as well as important links on what is happening in the Social Protection landscape in response to COVID-19.

Giving People Cash During COVID: A Look at What We're Working On Kate Glynn-Broderick At IPA, we have been conducting a series of research projects on the targeted cash transfers and are highlighting recent research on social transfers and other related COVID-19 research on our RECOVR Research Hub.

The Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Côte d’Ivoire: Lessons from the RECOVR Survey IPA has developed the RECOVR survey to better understand such realities and to enable data-driven policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this blog post, we report key findings and policy takeaways from the Côte d’Ivoire survey.

Focusing on the Foundations: Education in the time of COVID-19 A join statement by the Douglas B. Marshall, Jr. Foundation, Innovations for Poverty Action, J-PAL, Pratham, Teaching at the Right Level Africa, and Young 1ove.

Prioritizing Evidence-Based Responses in Burkina Faso to Mitigate the Economic Effects of COVID-19: Lessons from RECOVR IPA has developed the RECOVR survey to better understand such realities and to enable data-driven policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this blog post, we report key findings and policy takeaways from the Burkina Faso survey.

The Reach of the COVID-19 Crisis in Rwanda: Lessons from the RECOVR Survey During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have worked to reduce prevalence as well as to mitigate the socioeconomic impact of lockdown and other measures that have slowed down economic activity. To better understand the impact of the crisis on the...

Using Data and Evidence to Inform School Reopening in Ghana Ghana closed its schools on March 15, 2020, as part of the country’s lockdown to address the COVID-19 pandemic. When schools reopen, they cannot simply resume business as usual. Though the Ghanaian education system and education systems around the...

What Do We Really Know about Phone Surveying in Low- and Middle-Income Countries? Michael Rosenbaum, Savanna Henderson Phone surveys have long been a part of social science research in higher-income countries. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), researchers studying global poverty have historically relied on face-to-face surveys. As mobile phone ownership...

Community Monitoring Intervention Improves Headteachers’ Response to Coronavirus Pandemic Sarah Kabay On March 18, Uganda’s President Museveni ordered all schools to close in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Elevate quickly started looking into ways to support schools and share information with other educational actors. Between May and June of...

The Socioemotional Toll of COVID-19 on Families in Peru In Peru, the Ministry of Education, with the support of IPA and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), asked 8,000 families about the socio-emotional health of children, adolescents, and caregivers. This information gives us a first window into...

IPA’s Cautious Approach to Restarting In-Person Research Annie Duflo, Bruce Hickling, Steven Glazerman IPA has spent the last two months carefully considering our eventual, safe return to in-person research, consulting with experts and stakeholders, and drafting and revising policies and procedures. The outcome is a new policy framework on restarting...

Mitigating the Impacts of COVID-19 in a Fragile State: Key Findings from the RECOVR Sierra Leone Survey This blog post summarizes the key findings and policy implications of the first round of our RECOVR survey in Sierra Leone (more information about the RECOVR survey, a cross-country panel survey that is tracking the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19...

How Ghanaians are Coping With COVID-19: Five Lessons from the RECOVR Survey To better understand how people’s lives are being affected by COVID-19 and to enable data-driven policy response, IPA developed a panel survey called the RECOVR Survey which is being run in Ghana and 8 other countries. In Ghana, we have been working...

Supporting the Most Vulnerable Amid the Risk of Returning to Poverty: What the RECOVR Survey Tells Us about Pandemic Response in Colombia Sebastian Chaskel, Kyle Holloway In May, IPA ran a nationwide RECOVR Survey of 1,500 households in partnership with Colombia’s National Planning Department (DNP), the agency within the national government in charge of defining and recommending public policy, to support the...

What Do We Mean When We Say “Distance Learning” and Why Does it Matter? By Sarah Kabay, Olga Namen, and Stephanie Wu In response to the coronavirus pandemic, over 188 countries instituted country-wide school closures. As a result, countless education systems and educators are trying to find alternatives to the classroom...

Introducing the IPA-IGC COVID-19 Economic Impact Surveys By Lucia Sanchez and Matthieu Teachout Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the International Growth Centre (IGC) have jointly developed the COVID-19 Economic Impact Surveys, a multi-country effort to understand COVID-19’s impacts on economic...

Realities of Remote Learning: Lessons from Initial Findings of an 8,000-Household Survey in Peru During COVID-19 Most schools throughout Latin America have closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the school closures, nearly 8 million Peruvian students, from preschool to high school, are stuck at home. Within a few weeks, the Ministry of Education (Minedu)...

Juneteenth: Why We Are Embracing the Cause of Justice Annie Duflo, Radha Rajkotia Last week, IPA announced that we will observe Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, as a global holiday. We do this in the context of reflection on our own role and history in the fields in which we work. IPA...