According to the magazine, over 1 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. Amazingly, very little is known about how they make economic choices and what might help ease their lives.
However, economist Duflo, 38, is changing that. With her associates in MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, she has started an initiative to do something economists rarely do: gather real data about the effect of practical interventions that aim to alleviate poverty, to see what really works.
Last year, she won the John Bates Clark Medal, which makes her a Nobel winner in waiting. But she isn’t waiting to make the world a better place.
In 2005, MIT alumnus and Board of Trustees member Mohammed Jameel signed an agreement with MIT to develop and expand the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. The lab, named in honor of Mohammed Jameel’s father in 2005, is seeking to improve lives of 20 million people worldwide every year.
J-PAL is a network of researchers and hundreds of partners around the world, with regional branches in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.
