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Using Behavioral Insights to Make the Most of Emergency Social Protection Cash Transfers

by Laura Rawlings, World Bank, and Jessica Jean-Francois and Catherine MacLeod, ideas42

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across the globe have been adapting social assistance policies to support their populations. In fact, since March 2020, 139 countries and territories have planned, implemented, or adapted cash transfers to support their citizens. Cash transfers specifically make up about half of the social protection programs implemented to address […]

8 Strategies for College Leaders Advancing Change Initiatives

by Cassie Taylor

Beyond the stress of actually living through the COVID-19 crisis themselves, college leaders are in the midst of having to make substantial changes to the higher education system in what feels like real time. From ongoing efforts to improve student services to the urgent need to transition courses online due to the pandemic, the entire […]

The College Student Journey in the Time of COVID-19

by Jeff Ott & Cassie Taylor

We know there are often invisible behavioral barriers at every point in the college process. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic and its repercussions impact every point along a student’s college journey — exacerbating existing barriers and creating new ones for more than 25 million students across the U.S. All students, especially low-income and first-generation students who already […]

When Choices Don’t Match Preferences: Better Family Planning Through Behavioral Design

by Elizabeth McElwee & Emily Zimmerman

This post originally appeared on the Breakthrough Action + Research blog. Thanks to global efforts, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) services have made great strides. However, many people still do not use these services even when they currently want to avoid or delay pregnancy. Behavioral economics brings a unique perspective to the choices people […]

Now Is the Time to Improve the WIC Participant Experience

by Rebecca Oran

The ways in which participants experience public benefit programs like The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), often overlooked, is more relevant now than ever. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is facing historic numbers of individuals who are out of work. Many find themselves in the position of […]

New Playbook Helps Officials Prepare People to #VoteSafe

by Elizabeth Weingarten & Omar Parbhoo

In May 2020, we began hearing a pattern of concerns from Secretary of State offices across the country. One office told us they were worried about voters completing and signing their mail-in ballots incorrectly. Other offices agonized about how a steep decline in poll worker volunteers, many of whom were in populations most vulnerable to […]

The Student Success Toolkit: From “Test” to “Scale” at CUNY and Beyond

by Rebecca Nissan and Scott Lensing

Testing is one of the most exciting parts of implementing behavioral science interventions for us at ideas42. After months of research and interviews, and countless design iterations, we are finally able to gain insight into the extent of our impact. But what happens once we’ve run the regressions, printed the tables, and synthesized our […]

Street Smarts in the Field: Insights for Designing Public Housing Infrastructure

by Nuha Saho

For several years, city governments across the world have been incorporating insights from behavioral science to help design new policies and programs to solve important problems. This entails behavioral experts designing interventions to support groups or communities they themselves may not belong to. In fact, a strength behavioral scientists bring to pervasive problems is […]

Ethical Machine Learning

by ideas42

Applied together, it is fair to say that machine learning and behavioral science have the potential to significantly magnify social impact. Yet, as machine learning algorithms become more prevalent in the systems people use to make important decisions, there is deep, and not unfounded, concern that algorithms – even those designed with social impact […]

What’s it Like Applying Behavioral Insights to a Government Program?

by ideas42

A conversation with John Gachigi, Head of the Social Assistance Unit in the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, Government of Kenya. Governments around the world have invested in behavioral science innovations to strengthen programs and services for their citizens, and this has proven to be an impactful investment. However, as more government agencies and […]

Using Behavioral Insights to Make the Most of Emergency Social Protection Cash Transfers

8 Strategies for College Leaders Advancing Change Initiatives

The College Student Journey in the Time of COVID-19

When Choices Don’t Match Preferences: Better Family Planning Through Behavioral Design

Now Is the Time to Improve the WIC Participant Experience

New Playbook Helps Officials Prepare People to #VoteSafe

The Student Success Toolkit: From “Test” to “Scale” at CUNY and Beyond

Street Smarts in the Field: Insights for Designing Public Housing Infrastructure

Ethical Machine Learning

What’s it Like Applying Behavioral Insights to a Government Program?

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