Long-Term Impact Discovery
Motivation
Randomized controlled trials tend to evaluate programs on a relatively short timeline, with endline surveys usually occurring within 1-5 years. This means that most research projects rarely attempt to rigorously measure the long-term effects of development programs, which may be crucial to understanding which projects are most cost effective. For example, when evaluating a program aimed at improving child health, some effects are not measurable until the child reaches adulthood, 10-15 years after they benefit from the program. While a research team may have measured improved average health outcomes and education two years after the intervention, following up once the cohort has joined the labor market may reveal whether the program also improved economic opportunity for these children. The long-term impact discovery project aims to develop new opportunities and methods for identifying these kinds of long-term effects.
Activities
With support from GiveWell, CEGA is undertaking a major effort to develop a database of rigorous evaluations that were started eight or more years ago for which long-term follow-up could generate new and valuable insights for development decision-makers and academic research. The Long-term Impact Discovery (LID) project examines the empirical literature on randomized control trials in both cash transfers and child health to identify to what extent there are opportunities to perform long-term follow ups to better understand the impacts of development programs more than ten years after they are implemented. In addition to highlighting opportunities to fund high-value, long-term follow-up studies, the exercise will advance our ability to successfully track respondents over time and distance, generating important lessons for researchers embarking on new, long-term studies.
