International Policy Research

Reports

• "The Atlantic Philanthropies’ Children and Youth Programme in Ireland and Northern Ireland: Overview of Programme Evaluation Findings." Diane Paulsell, Patricia Del Grosso, and Mark Dynarski, January 2009. To address the unmet needs of disadvantaged children, the Children and Youth program supports services aimed at promoting healthy development of young children, to prevent later problems by intervening early in a problem cycle, when services are less costly and may have a greater chance for success. Despite challenges, the program has been a catalyst for change in encouraging government investment in evidence-based prevention and early intervention programs, promoting evidence-based practice among service providers, and engaging the academic sector in policy-oriented research. The report includes strategies for future directions.
• "Impact Evaluation of Burkina Faso's BRIGHT Program." Daniel Levy, Matt Sloan, Leigh Linden, and Harounan Kazianga, May 2009. The BRIGHT program was designed to improve the educational outcomes of children in Burkina Faso. It focused on girls in particular and was implemented in 132 rural villages throughout the 10 provinces in the country where girls’ school enrollment rates were lowest. The program constructed 132 primary schools with separate latrines for boys and girls and developed a set of interventions to increase girls’ enrollment rates, including daily meals, take-home rations, and school kits and textbooks. BRIGHT had a positive impact on school enrollment of about 20 percentage points. It also had positive impacts on math and French test scores. Impacts were positive for both boys and girls. 
• "Evaluating the Impact of Community-Based Interventions on Schooling Outcomes Among Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Lusaka, Zambia." Minki Chatterji, Paul Hutchinson, Nancy Murray, Kathy Buek, Yvonne Mulenga, and Tom Ventimiglia, April 2009. In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 12 million children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and many more children live with a chronically ill parent. This report evaluates the impact of a community-based program implemented by a Zambian nongovernmental agency on educational outcomes among orphans and vulnerable children in Lusaka, Zambia. These outcomes include school enrollment and being at the correct age-for-grade. This study suggests that the program is a promising approach to improving educational outcomes among orphans and vulnerable children in urban Zambia.
• "The Effects of Habitat on Basic Infrastructure." Larissa Campuzano, Dan Levy, and Andres Zamudio, December 2007. The social program Habitat was created to overcome the challenges presented in marginalized urban areas in Mexico due to high concentrations of poverty. This paper uses census data to present the results of an impact evaluation of Habitat on basic infrastructure during the first two years of implementation. The evaluation used a quasi-experimental approach based on propensity score matching to create comparison groups similar to the intervention groups for three components: (1) access to drinking water, (2) access to sewage and drainage, and (3) access to electricity. The researchers found evidence that Habitat intervention increased access to sewage about three percentage points more in the intervention group than in similar comparison groups, but it did not have a statistically significant effect in access to drinking water or electricity.
• "Evaluation of Jamaica’s PATH Program: Final Report." Dan Levy and Jim Ohls, March 2007. The government of Jamaica launched its social safety net initiative, the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), in 2001 to better target welfare benefits to the poor and to increase human capital by conditioning receipt of the benefits on requirements for school attendance and health care visits. Our study found that PATH succeeded in targeting benefits to the island’s poorest households and in encouraging households to send their children to school with greater regularity. The program also increased the use of preventive health care for children in PATH families. There was no evidence that PATH affected longer-term outcomes, such as grades, advancement to the next grade, or health care status.

Journal Articles

• "Toward Closing the Evaluation Gap: Lessons Learned from Three Recent Impact Evaluations of Social Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean." Lorenzo Moreno, Larissa Campuzano, Dan Levy, and Randall Blair, Well-Being and Social Policy, fall 2009. This journal article identifies how impact evaluations are encouraged and resisted in Latin America and the Caribbean. Drawing on case studies from work in El Salvador, Jamaica, and Mexico, the authors outline best practices for successfully designing and implementing a high quality impact evaluation.

Other

• Economic and Social Costs and Benefits to Employers of Retaining, Recruiting and Employing Disabled People and/or People with Health Conditions or an Injury: A Review of the Evidence. Edited by Karen Needels and Robert Schmitz, 2006. During the past 20 years, the United Kingdom (UK) has promoted fuller inclusion of people with disabilities into the workplace and, more broadly, into all aspects of public life. This volume identifies and synthesizes the best available evidence on the benefits and costs to UK employers of recruiting and retaining workers with disabilities. It addresses the following issues: (1) employers' understanding of disability and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), (2) costs and benefits associated with employing people with disabilities, and (3) the extent to which public policy can alter the labor market outcomes of this population.  Mathematica staff authored the following chapters:
• "Overview of the Legislative and Labour Market Context for Disabled Workers." Debra Brucker and Robert Schmitz. The authors summarize the DDA and describe employer responsibilities, noting that 6.9 million working-age people in the UK were disabled under the DDA definition in 2005. Of this group, about half were employed during the year, compared with 78 percent of nondisabled people. As the population ages, the number of working-age individuals with disabilities will also grow, so policies encouraging employment are important to sustain economic growth.
• "Framework for Employer Decision-Making." Karen Needels. This chapter provides a theoretical context for categorizing the economic forces that determine recruiting and retention of disabled and nondisabled workers. The model makes three important points: (1) employers want to find the right workers and retain them as long as possible, since recruiting is costly, (2) it is not possible to predict a candidate's productivity with certainty, and (3) some traits related to productivity are easy to assess, but others, such as self-assurance, appearance, and demeanor, may put candidates with disabilities at a disadvantage.
• "Evidence-Based Recommendations for Policy and Research." Karen Needels. This chapter synthesizes the arguments and evidence presented in the entire volume. The author notes that policies must be developed with an eye toward distinctions among employers and people with disabilities, in particular, differences between small and large employers, public and voluntary entities, and mental and physical impairments. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research.
• "Guide to Employers for the Recruitment and Retention of Disabled People." Clara Williams and Craig Thornton. This appendix reviews factors and questions employers can consider in employment decisions.