- On the IDB First steps blog, evidence from CCT programs that the long-term impacts are greater when kids get this in the womb and in their first two years of life versus even when aged 2 to 5: children who were exposed to the CCT while in-utero and during the first two years of life score 0.15 standard deviations higher in the cognitive development assessment than those boys who were exposed to the program when they were 2 to 5 years old.
- A new paper from the UK behavioral insights unit looks at how to increase charitable giving. They report on 5 randomized trials to test how very small changes can lead to relatively impressive gains – for example, one program tried to get employees to donate one day’s salary to charity - In the control group around 5% of people gave a day of their salary. This increased to 11% when people were also given sweets when they entered the building; giving people both some sweets as they entered the building and a personalised message from the CEO led to a tripling of donation rates to 17%.
- Chris Blattman has released a bunch of his data on civil war, conflict, and child soldiering. Kudos for making more data available – something I am also slowly doing and will blog about soon.
- A new Finance & PSD Impact note uses experiments in Mexico City to look at the question “Why is voluntary financial education so unpopular?”. This is the 25th in a series of 2-page notes summarizing finance and private sector impact evaluations.
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