J-PAL and IRD — Incentives for Immunization Studies

Abstract

Good Ventures is making two gifts of $100,000 to the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to support two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in India and Pakistan that will test whether providing non-cash incentives increases child immunization rates. We recommended these gifts primarily because they seem to be promising opportunities to advance our experimental work to “seed” potential new top charities. As high-quality replications of a potentially cost-effective intervention, these studies could help us to determine whether incentives for immunization should be one of our priority programs. One of our major remaining questions about the incentives for immunization program is whether it is as cost-effective as our other priority programs. We did some initial work on this question, but found that the cost-effectiveness analyses seemed to be highly sensitive to a few core assumptions that would have taken substantial research capacity to analyze properly (more). Due to constraints on our capacity, we have deprioritized further investigation into these questions but have recommended these gifts in the hopes of returning to them in the future.