Motivation
Cost-effectiveness is a measure of impact for every dollar spent on a particular population, and it’s a catalytic engine that can drive greater outcomes across a range of global development and humanitarian assistance programming.
The scale of challenges facing decision makers around the world has outpaced the resources at their disposal. With limited budgets, constrained staff resources, and shifting geopolitical relationships, leaders need better and more relevant information about how best to achieve their outcomes of interest. Causal evidence can point the way.
Unfortunately, impact evaluations (like randomized control trials) only reveal part of the picture. Cost evidence is essential for policymakers to decide how to allocate scarce resources. Yet, fewer than one in five impact evaluations integrates cost evidence.
As more and more decision makers prioritize robust, experimental evidence in the design and implementation of development interventions and humanitarian aid, cost-effectiveness data promises to transform how organizations allocate their budgets, ensuring every dollar achieves maximum impact.
Learn more in this USAID position paper on cost-effectiveness.
Advancing Cost-Effectiveness
CEGA is at the forefront of the movement to build cost-effectiveness into impact evaluations. For years, we have invested in improving the market for cost data by generating cost data, building research capacity, creating tools, empowering users, and convening the existing costing community.
Learn more and sign up for the Costing Community of Practice.
