Impact case study database

Poor Early Childhood Development (ECD) in low and middle-income countries is a major public problem, affecting an estimated 250,000,000 children under 5 years, who fail to reach their developmental potential due to poverty, associated lack of poor nutrition, and a lack of psychosocial stimulation (visual, auditory, tactile and emotional stimulation provided via an affectionate caregiver-child bond). Attanasio’s research [R1] has provided a scalable ECD model which has been replicated, adapted, and implemented by governments in Latin-America (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador) to improve the childhood development and cognition of 100,000+ children between 2014 and 2021.

Establishing and expanding a scalable cost-effective ECD programme in Colombia

In 2014-2016, following research [leading to the publication of R1, R3] Attanasio adapted his ECD intervention strategy to integrate it into FAMI (Familia, Mujer e Infancia) a public large-scale parenting support service for vulnerable families in rural Colombia) for the Colombian government. The Director of Monitoring and Evaluation of Public Policies in the National Planning Department in Colombia describes how Attanasio contributed to FAMI’s aim of “seek[ing] to promote the integral development of girls and boys in early childhood” through the design of an “intervention that is by construction scalable” which led to evaluation to evidence “impact on cognitive knowledge and nutritional status for the most disadvantaged children” [A]. They further attest that Attanasio’s research [R1/R2/R3] has “contributed to date to the policy debate in Colombia and the policy decision-making” around early-childhood development [A].

In June 2017, policy-makers cited [R1] in a report by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative, noting that “stimulation reduced the cognitive gap between poor and wealthy children by nearly one-third” in Colombia [B]. Attanasio’s research contributed to the Colombian government taking an evidence-based approach to ECD policy dialogues and decision-making. In 2018-2019, the Colombian Government included 8 studies conducted by Attanasio in an “evidence map” on ECD, specifically created to inform policy [C]. For Colombia’s National Planning Department, Professor Attanasio’s work and its inclusion in the evidence map “has been important and used to generate helpful information” which “helped policy stakeholders make decisions based on evidence” including interventions that have “positive effects on cognitive development and health, as [those] evaluated by Professor Attanasio in Colombia have show[n]” [A].

Latin American governments’ adoption of the ECD model reaching 100,000+ children

The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) promoted Attanasio’s model for scalable early-childhood interventions [R1/R2/R3] in Latin American countries, leading to further replication. The Principal Economic Advisor at the IADB attests to the success of the scalability of the model [from R1/R2]: “Professor Attanasio’s research on a home visiting program in Colombia, published in the American Economic Review and the BMJ, has been decisive in the scale-up of these programs in many countries in the region where the IADB provides financial and technical assistance, including Brazil and Peru, where they now benefit hundreds of thousands of poor children and their families” [D].

The IADB promotion of Attanasio’s scalable model led to the Peruvian government launching an ECD intervention programme which reaches 93,000 children from disadvantaged rural families. To implement the programme, the Peruvian government created a home visit service called Servicio de Acompañamiento Familias (SAF). A 2015 evaluation of the programme (jointly prepared by the IADB and the Peruvian Ministry of Finance) cited [R1] several times and evidenced the significance of the SAF intervention upon children as being “equivalent to closing the socioeconomic gap in cognitive performance by 18% and the communication gap for boys and girls in the study sample by 35%” [E].

Since 2018, the IADB has supported the government in Ecuador to strengthen home visitation services, incorporating lessons from Attanasio’s research in Colombia [R1-R3, FAMI]. The Principal Economic Advisor for the Social Sector at IABD credits Attanasio’s research with influencing the design and focus of services: “[m]any features of the design of these programs—for example, with regard to the hiring of local women as home visitors, the desirability (or not) of including a nutritional component in home visits, and the curriculum — build directly on Professor Attanasio’s papers. […] The Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion of Ecuador is currently revising the technical and operational guides that define childcare provision in public childcare centres for children younger than 36 months-of-age to improve their quality. The curricular content is also being revised to highlight the importance of interactions between caregiver and child, a critical element of process quality, as shown by Professor Attanasio’s research” [D].

Global expansion of ECD interventions via engagement with NGOs, the IADB, and WHO.

Scalable ECD intervention models are especially needed in India, where in 2016, 63,400,000 children aged under 5 were reported as being at risk of not reaching their developmental potential, more than any other country. Attanasio’s research, in partnership with Pratham, India’s largest education NGO, expanded the scalability of the ECD intervention model to enable NGO-government partnerships, and proved the efficacy of group interventions. Pratham Education Foundation’s Advisor emphasized the importance of Attanasio’s research in designing scalable cost-efficient interventions in India: “a detailed cost-analysis of the intervention shows that a lower-cost model is feasible, facilitating intervention at scale” and commented on the possibility of “partnerships with state governments or large-scale community programs in India, potentially impacting millions of children” that Attanasio’s adjusted ECD model have created [F].

Between publication in September 2014 and 6 October 2020, [R1] has been downloaded 14,587 times [G] and frequently cited in reports by policymakers [H]. In 2015 the IADB published the open-access book The Early Years: Child Well-Being and the Role of Public Policy. Explicitly directed at an audience of policymakers, the book “offers suggestions for improving public policy in this critical area” [I]. In the preface, Luis Alberto Moreno, the president of IADB, argued that “Governments can – and should – make a major positive difference […] An investment in a well-crafted government program, using the tools that we know today can be highly effective, can have a huge development impact” [I, p. xvi]. The IADB consulted Attanasio on “the scope of this publication” and 5 separate outputs by him are cited, including [R1] [I, p. ix]. The World Health Organization (WHO) cited [R1] in their 2017 report, ‘An evidence map of social, behavioural and community engagement interventions for reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health’, which was downloaded 2400 times between April 2020 and September 2020. Publications by the IADB and Inter-American Development Bank citing [R1] have been downloaded over 15,000 times, providing access to leading ECD research to policymakers and medical professionals worldwide’.

Blundell’s research [R1-R6] has fundamentally changed public and political discourse about taxation and earnings, which has led to legislative changes in the United Kingdom.

Influencing the design of Universal Credit in the UK

In the UK, 5.6 million citizens who are unemployed or on low income receive Universal Credit (UC). The previous welfare-benefit system in the UK incentivised part-time work through a 16 hour per week eligibility rule for Working Tax Credit. This disproportionately affected women with children, due to the sensitivity of their work decisions to financial incentives [R2]. Blundell presented his research on the welfare re-design in a series of lectures on Taxation of Labour Earnings at HM Treasury in November 2013, 2014, and 2015, and continued to engage with the Cabinet Office, DWP and HM Treasury (May 15th 2018) and as part of a panel discussion at HM Treasury Labour Market Conference 18th September 2018 on the issue. In these interactions with individual government analysts and seminars given to government departments, Blundell’s research was used to detail the way welfare benefits impact on hours of work, employment and earnings progression. Blundell’s research, and research-informed guidance, drawing upon [R5] and [R6] was key in redesigning welfare benefits that aim to encourage work, while avoiding severe means-testing and perverse incentives for part-time work. The Chief Economic Advisor, HM Treasury agreed, “The research on the economics and econometrics of tax and benefit policy has been highly influential in setting and informing our policy agenda and research. We have drawn on his work in considering the business case for Universal Credit, the Government’s flagship reform of the welfare system, and in other modelling and analysis of the welfare system and labour market to inform policy thinking and advice to ministers” [A]. The work in [R5] and [R6] documented the specific importance of high effective marginal tax rates in the UK welfare system for low wage mothers and the strong adverse incentive in the part-time eligibility condition for working tax credits.

Improving UK policy dialogue on welfare reform

Research on welfare reform, in particular the underlying incentives to work and the effectiveness of the system to support families with low or no earnings, underpinned by Blundell’s body of work [including R1-R6], has been mentioned over 100 times since 2015 in House of Lords and House of Commons debates, involving leading political figures from across the political spectrum. IFS policy briefs, which drew upon Blundell’s research in [R1-R6], were cited in a number of Universal Credit debates across 2015-2017 focusing on the impact of Universal Credit on claimants, tax credits, household incomes, single parents, workless households and tax reform. For example:

• In the 15 September 2015 Tax Credits debate Helen Goodman (Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions) noted that the Treasury Select Committee had commissioned research from IFS whilst challenging Exchequer Secretary Damian Hinds MP on stating the apparent ‘penalties’ of lone parents working: “The Institute for Fiscal Studies, following a request from the Treasury Select Committee, sent us a new analysis showing that lone parents earning less than £20,000 will have marginal deduction rates of either over 90%, if they are on the old legacy system, or 75%, if they are on universal credit. How does the Minister square that with his claims at the Dispatch box?”;

• During the 6 January 2016 Household Income debate, Robert Flello MP when discussing the effects of Universal Credit on Scottish low income households, stated that Blundell’s IFS research had shown “by 2020 more than 2.5 million working families on universal credit will, on average, be £1,600 a year worse off owing to the cuts to the work allowance in universal credit”;

• On 25 February 2016, during a Welfare Reform debate on Gender Equality Chris Law MP supported the challenge to Minister for Employment Priti Patel that changes to UC would disproportionately negatively affect women, based on IFS research saying that “lone parents with assets or unearned income are more likely to lose out under universal credit. With single parents overwhelmingly being female, it appears […] that the Government’s austerity programme is once again targeting women. What representations has the Minister made to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about the impact of universal credit on women’s equality?”;

• Finally, on 16 November 2017, prior to the Universal Credit Roll Out debate in the House of Commons, Baroness Hollis of Heigham took to the House of Lords and reiterated, “The IFS says that 3 million working families will, on average, be £2,500 a year worse off. The work allowance, which is taper free, before UC withdrawal kicks in, has been cut by up to £2,000 for a lone parent, and for single people, scrapped. A lone parent with one child now has to work 25 hours a week on UC to get the same income as working 16 hours a week under tax credits—60% more hours for the same income.” She also stated that the potential effects on claimants would be “catastrophic” [B].

On the basis of these arguments, the Chief Analyst and Chief Scientific Adviser of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) noted, “In particular, his [Blundell’s] research on taxation and labour supply has had a substantive impact on making the business case for reforming the structure of Universal Credit.” [C]. After long debate the DWP went on to produce a smoother tapering of benefit withdrawal and a removal of part-time eligibility, where the amount of Universal Credit gradually reduced as the recipient earnings increased, but no longer included the 16 hours per week requirement.

The research on the progression of earnings combined data resources from the Office of National Statistics SRS confidential data sources and Blundell was awarded the Office for National Statistics Research Excellence Special Recognition Award for 2020 for innovative research on inequality that delivered a public benefit to the UK. In presenting the excellence award the Chief Statistician said Blundell’s research is “grounded in absolutely brilliant econometrics but influenced by the need to get results which impact on policy and on peoples’ lives” [D].

Informing the UK Government Equalities Office

Blundell’s research into the hours conditions in the UK tax system also uncovered the key adverse role of part-time work in gender earnings differences, and related weak impact of part-time working hours on pay progression, a “particularly important insight” that the Director of the Government Equalities Office (GEO) credits research based on Blundell’s work [R5] for having brought to “the forefront of our focus” [E]. The research has directly informed the GEO’s knowledge and approach towards the issue: “The work has been important and influential in shaping our understanding of the origins of the gender pay gap and our thinking about how it can be addressed.” The Director also acknowledged the broadened professional and public awareness Blundell’s research has generated: “The clear and powerful communication of the findings of the research has significantly enhanced its impact, making it easier for us to digest its implications and making it known to a much wider audience than would otherwise have been the case” [E].

This was recognised by Baroness Penn and Baroness Berridge (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department of Education), in a Lords debate on International Women’s Day (10 March 2020) when discussing the effect of a pay gap on women who have families: “Research by the IFS shows that when a couple have their first child, on average, the wage gap between the mother and father is 10%. However, by the time of the child’s 13th birthday, it has grown to 30%, often driven by the mother’s decision to move to part-time work.” Baroness Gale observed on 6 February 2018 “My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies [IFS] published research yesterday showing that, by the time their first child is grown up, mothers earn 30% less per hour than fathers? A quarter of that gap can be explained by the fact that mothers are the ones who generally work part-time while their children are growing up, so they miss out on earnings growth and opportunities. While it is good to see the pay gap closing when women first get on the career ladder, when women and men decide to become parents it is usually the women who miss out. What are the Government doing to close this gap for women who are or have been working part-time?” [F]. The IFS research to which Baroness Gale referred had cited [R5] as the standalone “previous research” which “tells us that the three years less spent in any form of paid work understates the gender differences in accumulated ‘human capital’ (i.e. skills and experience that employers value) – it is the ten-year gap in full-time experience that is more relevant” and that “the effect of extra part-time experience on women’s wages is negligible” [G].

Influencing tax policy reform around the world

The impact of Blundell’s research on tax and welfare impacts on labour supply has also had a major policy impact on tax and benefit reform around the world. In October 2016, on the basis of [R4, R5], Blundell was invited to serve as an advisor to the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands, during the development of the MICSIM model (a behavioural microsimulation model used to generate a greater understanding of the labour responses of changes in the tax-benefit system). The Deputy Director of the CPB directly credits Blundell’s research for having had “a substantive impact on making the business case for tax policy for reform in the Netherlands”. He specifically credits Blundell’s advice for the CBP’s decision to “take into account the price and use of childcare and involuntary unemployment in the labour supply model” and confirms that the resultant “MICSIM model has since been used extensively in the analysis of tax-benefit reforms for the Dutch government and political parties” [H]. Blundell’s research [R1-R5] and engagement has also had a direct impact at the IMF, where the Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, writes “The body of research on the economics and econometrics of tax policy and social spending over recent years has been highly influential, including at the IMF, in terms of both methodology and in setting and informing the policy agenda” ( I).

As a result of Blundell’s research, tax and welfare policy has changed, including the design of the Universal Credit in the UK. As probably the largest reform to the UK welfare system for a generation, the conditioning on part-time work for eligibility to in-work benefit entitlement was removed, the benefit withdrawal rates integrated, and the higher withdrawal rates reduced. These are recommendations that Blundell had made in [R3, R4 and R5]. The research provided the key empirical evidence in the UK on the part-time penalty on pay and pay progression for women with children and its role in the gender wage gap, with a major impact on policies toward pay equality.

In April 2013, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim announced a global target date of 2030 to end ‘extreme poverty’, then defined as living on or below the equivalent of USD1.25 per day (updated in 2015 to USD1.90 per day). An estimated 800,000,000 people still live below this line. Within that demographic, the ultra-poor have proved particularly difficult to reach. Rasul’s research has made a significant contribution to global efforts to set the ultra-poor on a sustainable path out of poverty, primarily via its influence on the decisions of national governments and national and international NGOs to invest in graduation-style programmes. A ‘State of the Sector’ report by the World Bank’s Partnership for Economic Inclusion showed that in 2018 there were 99 graduation programmes in 43 countries, serving 3,100,000 households; many further initiatives are planned [A]. According to BRAC, by 2020 the graduation approach had been adapted in 114 programmes in 45 countries. The research described here has contributed to the existence of all of these programmes by providing the first robust evidence for the long-term efficacy of the graduation approach.

The primary mechanism for this has been the provision in [R1] of the first robust evidence for the long-term efficacy of the graduation-style antipoverty intervention pioneered by BRAC’s ‘Targeting the Ultra-Poor’ (TUP) programme. The ‘big-push’ approach combining large-scale business asset transfers with complementary skills training was shown to deliver significantly greater benefits than programmes that aimed to improve access to capital or skills alone. By helping to validate the graduation approach, the research has made a major contribution to work by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) – and, in turn, many other humanitarian and development organisations – to adapt and roll out graduation programmes around the world. [R1] has therefore shaped poverty alleviation efforts around the world by directly and indirectly informing strategic planning and investment decisions within a wide range of humanitarian and development organisations, and national governments, illustrative examples of which are outlined below.

BRAC: BRAC serves a global population of some 138,000,000 people in 12 countries across Asia, Africa, and the Americas and has a total annual expenditure in excess of USD800,000,000. The research published with BRAC in [R1] has informed the USD20-30,000,000 of that total budget that it devotes each year to its ultra-poor graduation programme [B1 p.73 ]. The Deputy Director of BRAC International observes that this was the first time a rigorous experimental design had been used to evaluate BRAC’s programmes but randomised control trials are now used regularly in their evaluation and have become ‘an important part of justifying spending on a program’ [B2]. In Bangladesh, where the original TUP ran, BRAC graduated 1,900,000 ultra-poor households between 2002 and 2017. In line with the findings in [R1], consumption, savings, and asset holdings dramatically increase among programme participants: 95% of participants achieve graduation and maintain their improved conditions beyond the programme cycle [B1, p.20 ]. BRAC uses the research in its international advocacy work, including to help secure funding for new TUP programmes and to assure donors that funds are being spent on effective programming [B3]. In an interview conducted in July 2017, the Senior Director of the TUP explained: ‘The RCT [randomised control trial] evaluation of BRAC’s graduation program **[R1]**…has played a large role in lending credibility to BRAC’s advocacy efforts’ [B4]. The research findings – and the success of BRAC-led programmes informed by it – has also ‘tremendously advanced global advocacy for graduation-style programs’ [B3], leading to the implementation of interventions that improve the lives of very poor people around the world.

By demonstrating conclusively that the TUP approach was effective, [R1] also underpinned decisions by BRAC to reproduce the model beyond Bangladesh: preliminary research results prompted pilot programmes in Pakistan [B2], Haiti [B3], and eight other countries beyond Bangladesh (including Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan and Peru). For example, between 2013 and 2019, graduation programmes benefitted 1,600 participants in Lesotho, 250 ultra-poor women and their households in South Sudan, and 1,660 young people in Uganda. Benefits included enhancements in participants’ knowledge, skills and resources to improve their own and their families’ health and nutritional status via greater food security, and increased financial skills and savings behaviour. Participants also benefitted from improved capacity to increase their incomes [B5].

The methodology employed by the UCL/LSE team is used by BRAC to evaluate aspects of its programming. Its Vice-Chair explains: ‘the lessons about research design learned alongside [the research team] from 2007-2014 are still being applied in BRAC’s Research and Evaluation Division’ [B6]. Wider impacts are achieved through the development and delivery by BRAC of technical assistance to improve other organisations’ capacity to implement graduation-style antipoverty programmes. In January 2016, it released a 116 page in-field toolkit, which makes extensive use of the research in providing guidance for both BRAC and other NGO employees implementing TUP programmes around the world [B7]. BRAC also regularly advises and trains governments, humanitarian and development organisations, and UN bodies to adapt and implement the graduation approach. Its Ultra Poor Graduation Initiative, an entity launched in 2013 to support organisations implementing graduation programmes, provides technical assistance and advisory services across five main phases of the graduation approach: assessment, design, planning, implementation and learning. The Initiative is currently working with organisations implementing graduation programmes in Egypt (2018-2021), Liberia (2018-2020), the Philippines (2017-2020), Uganda (2019-2022) and Zambia (2020-2024).

Via its influence on BRAC, the research has further shaped the approach taken by wide-ranging international poverty-alleviation organisations and national governments around the world.

World Vision International: The research informed an internal review of strategy at World Vision International (a charity devoted to improving the lives of vulnerable children) which led, in 2017, to its commitment to making the graduation approach its core model for the period to 2030. According to the Senior Director of Livelihoods at World Vision, this change in strategy will inform a budget of some USD300,000,000 and shape operations in 65 countries. The Senior Director cites [R1] as one of the two pieces of evidence supporting their new commitment to graduation programmes, explaining that it ‘influenced World Vision to adopt graduation because it shows that the positive effects of graduation are sustainable’ [C]. This is reiterated in the World Vision Ultra-Poor Graduation Handbook, which cites [R1] in explaining why World Vision chose to adopt the graduation approach [C p.13 ]. Its version of the TUP, the Ultra Poor Graduation Model (UPG) is currently used in Sri Lanka, India, Mongolia and Armenia, as well as in Bangladesh. With BRAC’s support, World Vision plans to implement graduation programmes to help improve child wellbeing among vulnerable households in 40 countries [B8].

Fonkoze: By 2019, Haitian NGO Fonkoze had graduated more than 6,000 Haitian women out of ultra-poverty through its Chemen Lavi Miyò (CLM) programme, an intervention based on the BRAC TUP programme. Fonkoze has used [R1] ‘as evidence for an underlying model upon which new adaptations can be built’, for example for people with disabilities and those with HIV, and the ‘sustainability of graduation outcomes as shown by **[R1]**’ enable them to advocate for the inclusion of graduation in a new national social protection strategy for Haiti [D]. In this context, the CLM has been identified as a promising pilot initiative and a candidate for scaling by the Institute for Development Studies [D pp.1, 3-4 ].

The BOMA Project: A collaboration between a US non-profit organisation and Kenyan NGO, the BOMA Project helps women in Kenya to lift themselves out of extreme poverty. The Project’s CEO explained that they use the ‘rigorous evidence’ that [R1] provides to secure donor funding and as an advocacy tool in its work with various African governments, which is significant because ‘[c]ollaboration with governments to improve existing social protection programs can be one of the most effective ways of scaling up graduation programming. The research in [R1] can help make the case to government ministries that the most effective way to structure their existing interventions is using the graduation approach’ [E]. The Project further uses the work ‘as evidence of a successful model upon which to base its own programmes’ as it expands from Kenya into new countries such as Northern Uganda, Somalia and Tanzania [E].

Trickle Up: International development agency Trickle Up has piloted adaptations of the BRAC graduation programme to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, and to improve the lives of people with disabilities and of indigenous people. The Director of Monitoring, Evaluation and Research at Trickle Up explains that [R1] ‘adds to the body of evidence for graduation which informs Trickle Up’s budget of approximately 5 million dollars and its work in 10 countries’ [F].

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): UNHCR serves 33,900,000 displaced people globally. Its commitment to adapting the TUP to support work with refugees has been underpinned by the validation of graduation programmes provided by [R1], in line with a strategic approach first set out in UNHCR Global Strategy for Livelihoods 2014-18. Since 2013, its field teams and partners (with support from Trickle Up) have implemented the graduation approach in six countries, with positive outcomes already observed. In Costa Rica, for example, where the programme was implemented from 2014-17, unemployment rates among refugees participating in the graduation programme delivered by UNHCR decreased from 36% to 4%, while self-employment rates more than doubled from 24% to 59%; as many as 79% of participating households reached a monthly income equal or greater to the national minimum wage upon graduation [G]. A new initiative led by the UNHCR Poverty Alleviation Coalition plans to scale up the graduation approach to reach half a million refugee and host-community households in 35 countries from 2020 to 2025.

National governments: According to the UNHCR, more than 15 country governments have integrated the graduation approach into their social protection and poverty alleviation policies and programmes [G]. Many of these work with NGOs to develop context-specific approaches to alleviating poverty. As well as supporting the work of other NGOs, BRAC has provided technical assistance and implementation support to several national governments; it credits the research published in [R1] with helping to secure these collaborations [B4]. Significant examples include a long-term contract with the Government of Kenya to help the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Kenyan Ministry of Finance implement a graduation program, and a multi-year implementation program in the Philippines, funded by the Asian Development Bank [B4].

The Government of Pakistan has used the BRAC TUP programme as a model for engendering social protection by incorporating some of its most successful features into the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), a federal unconditional cash transfer programme targeting some of the poorest households in Pakistan. Since 2013, Rasul and the LSE researchers have worked with the Pakistani Ministry of Livestock and a large NGO – the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) – to achieve this. Underpinned by [R1], they designed a research programme (piloted in Punjab) that compared the results of an asset transfer graduation program and an equivalently-valued cash unconditional cash transfer. PPAF has since successfully advocated for the implementation of a graduation programme to help households currently within the BISP to move out of it. The Group Head of Compliance and Quality Assurance at PPAF confirms that ‘a strong research based is critical to [PPAF’s] advocacy work’ and [R1] was a key piece of evidence used by PPAF to successfully advocate for the take-up of the graduation approach by the Government of Pakistan [H]. The Government of Pakistan’s 2017-18 budget included plans to expand the BISP to offer training and grants of PKR50,000 to 250,000 households as part of the graduation programme [I]. In March 2018, the Government of Pakistan announced a new agreement between BISP and PPAF to implement the Poverty Graduation strategy across Pakistan. In total, 320,000 households, representing 2,000,000 individuals, will benefit from this partnership [I].

[R1] provided robust evidence that a graduation style antipoverty programme intervention sets the ultra-poor on a sustainable path out of poverty. This evidence informed programme development and implementation among national governments (including Pakistan, Kenya and Philippines) and national and international NGOs, affecting the strategic spending of millions of dollars, and ultimately helping many thousands of the world’s poorest people to improve their lives.

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Prior to CReAM’s research, a clear understanding of the fiscal impacts of immigration to the UK had not been established. Around the time this research was conducted, immigration had become a hot-button political topic, and the lack of available rigorous analysis contributed to polarisation of opinions and arguments in public and political debate. CReAM’s analysis remains the most thorough in methodology, the broadest in terms of data, and the most specific in results conducted on this topic to date. It has thus shaped policy discussions and informed public debate around immigration to the UK.

Shaping parliamentary debate and highlighting issues of concern to government

Since pre-existing evidence had found mixed conclusions about the fiscal impact of immigration on the UK economy, policy debates prior to the publication of CReAM’s analyses were more vulnerable to cherry-picking of results that supported a predetermined and often partisan agenda. By clarifying and deepening the understanding of the fiscal impact of immigration on the UK economy, CReAM’s research [R1, R2] enabled a more informed and careful debate by politicians, making it difficult to misrepresent the impact of migration to the UK. Most notably, this occurred during several parliamentary debates (e.g. **[A, B]**), but also in general political discourse. For example, in a 2015 Immigration Bill debate in the Commons Chamber [A], then Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham declared “May I again refer the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to the research? The UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration talks about the positive economic benefit of migration overall. He needs to concern himself with the evidence before he intervenes in the House.” During this debate, an exchange between Mr Burnham and Theresa May, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, among other MPs, debated CReAM’s findings in such detail that a fact-check was issued during the debate to resolve an issue of contention [A]. Outside Westminster, Lancaster and Fleetwood MP Cat Smith said of comments by a senior Wyre councillor: “[he] should know better than to stir up community tensions […] [h]e will know that the point I was making was that European immigrants who arrived in the UK since 2000 have contributed more than £20bn to UK public finances between 2001 and 2011” [C], a key research finding of [R2].

Research papers [R1] and [R2] have succeeded in offering evidence that served as a solid basis for objective policy discussions, as proven by their citation in multiple Parliamentary debates in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Most notably these include: the Immigration: Economic Impact debate in the Lords Chamber in November 2013 [B] (the fourth comment made cited **[R1]**), the December 2013 Commons Immigration debate [A], and the 2015 Immigration Bill debates in both the Commons Chamber [A] and Lords Chamber, where Lord Kennedy of Southwark cited [R2] as part of his argument that the Bill was not fit for purpose [B]. In addition, written evidence submitted in November 2013 by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) during the Committee Stage of the Immigration Bill relied on CReAM’s research [D]. In all of these cases, CReAM’s research promoted factual discussion and suppressed biased readings of the evidence. For example, during the Commons Immigration debate in 2013, Sheffield Central MP Paul Blomfield countered the Isle of Wight MP Andrew Turner, stating that “[t]he impression being given is that EU migrants are freeloaders ... [h]owever, all the evidence, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, suggests that EU migrants make a net fiscal contribution” [A]. Mr Blomfield then went on to support his argument by extensively citing results from the findings of research paper [R1], and quoting Dustmann directly. In the case of the RCM, “concerned about the absence of evidence justifying the proposed changes” provided by the Department of Health, their written evidence cited [R1] to argue that “there is no clear case that charging for access to NHS services needs to be extended” [D].

As well as being referenced in parliamentary proceedings, CReAM’s research findings have been central to reports commissioned by government to guide UK policy. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is an advisory public body sponsored by the Home Office, which prepares reports for government on issues related to immigration. Jonathan Wadsworth, a member of the MAC between 2007 and 2016, states: “The papers by Dustmann and Frattini on the fiscal impacts of immigration were extremely influential in informing the committee’s deliberations on various remits. The papers are cited in several MAC reports and fill a major gap in our understanding of this vital attribute of immigration” [E]. The MAC’s 2014 report, “Migrants in low-skilled work” [F], references [R1], stating that “[t]he most thorough recent analysis of the impact of the fiscal effects of immigration to the UK has been carried out by Dustmann and Frattini”, and goes on to make extensive use of CReAM’s findings. The MAC’s 2018 “EEA migration in the UK” report [F], intended to guide post-Brexit immigration policy, bases its conclusions on the fiscal impacts of immigration on a background report it commissioned from Oxford Economics [F], whose analysis drew on the methodological innovations of research papers [R1] and [R2] and who state that “Dustmann and Frattini (2014) provided the most comprehensive static assessment to date” (referencing **[R2]**). The 2018 MAC report makes broad recommendations about the UK’s immigration policy based in part on the effect on public finances, for example recommending that the list of occupations eligible for Tier 2 visas be expanded. In making repeated, explicit, and detailed use of CReAM’s research, both parliament and governmental advisory bodies have provided solid evidence of the practical value of this work in guiding UK policy.

Shaping public discourse on immigration

During the lead-up to the 2015 British general election and the Brexit referendum in 2016, the public discourse around immigration became highly polarised, with an Ipsos study on public attitudes in 2015 finding that 68% of British residents agreed that “immigration has placed too much pressure on public services”. In this context, CReAM research dispelling these misapprehensions was especially relevant. Indeed, the finding that “EU citizens have contributed £20 billion more in taxes than they have taken out in benefits” [R2] was cited directly on the website of “Britain Stronger in Europe,” the official “Remain” campaign group during the referendum [G].

CReAM’s research instigated more informed public discussions of immigration through widespread media coverage. In total, their findings have been mentioned more than 250 times in online and print newspapers and magazines, and featured in over 50 TV or radio segments (many of which featured interviews with CReAM members themselves) [C]. A member of the Transatlantic Council on Migration and the European Council on Foreign Relations and former UK Home Secretary has asserted that CReAM’s research “had a significant impact upon the public debate. The effect of this was to change to some extent the terms of the debate in the UK about the costs and benefits of immigration and there has been a long-term impact in giving confidence to many who were unsettled by the power and vitriol of the anti-immigrant argument” [ H]. Furthermore, a former EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and current Mercator Senior Fellow at Hertie School of Governance has stated that CReAM findings were “extremely helpful when public discourse often became detached from evidence and subject of manipulation” and “provided a solid ground for policy making at national as well as EU level” [I].

The impact of this research on the public discourse has been sustained over time, with media continuing to cite its findings years after the Brexit referendum. In many cases these reports do not explicitly refer to research papers [R1] and [R2], but instead to the findings demonstrating e.g. that EU immigrants to the UK contributed a net GBP20,000,000,000 to public finances between 2001 and 2011. This shows that the facts established in CReAM’s research have now become part of the public consciousness, being referenced in 2018 in media as varied as comedy program “The Mash Report” [C], a Stephen Fry documentary [C], and Afua Hirsch’s Sunday Times bestseller Brit(ish) [J] to demonstrate that EU migrants pay much more in taxes than they take out in benefits. Coverage of the findings has reached a broad range of audiences, being featured in newspapers from the centre-right Daily Mail (2014 daily circulation: 1,678,729) to the centre-left Guardian (2014 daily circulation: 177,827), as well as heavily debated in more specialised sources such as the Financial Times (2014 daily circulation: 210,182) and the Economist (2014 average weekly print circulation: 201,950) [C].

The extent of the debate engendered by [R2] is indicated by the varied responses to the findings in the UK press, which lead to the Guardian running an article on 5 November 2014 (293 shares, 707 comments) discussing the contrasting headlines the research had generated [C]. Highlighting the dissonance between reporting such as their own – which focused on the finding that “European migrants… are not a drain on Britain’s finances and pay out far more in taxes than they receive in state benefits” (17,347 shares, 3,704 comments) [C] – and that of the Daily Mail – which focused on findings about the cost of non-European migrants in the UK and argued that research paper [R2] ”sought to put an overwhelmingly positive gloss on the economic impact of mass immigration” (2,400 shares, 700 comments) [C] – the editorial asked: “So how did the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times all manage to end up with the apparently contradictory positive conclusion […]? Were the Telegraph and Mail simply making it up?”. Engaging directly with **[R2]**’s methodology, the Guardian asked “which set of calculations helps to answer the question ‘do immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems?’ which the study’s authors say they set out to answer” and described how **[R2]**’s findings support the positive interpretation of migrants’ economic contribution [C].

Through this widespread dissemination and discussion, CReAM’s research contributed to a general process of rationalising populist fears and misapprehensions about immigration to the UK: between 2013 and 2017 Ipsos found a 14 percentage point drop in the number of British residents concerned about immigrants placing pressure on public services. British Social Attitudes polling by the National Centre for Social Research in 2019 found that of those who stated they had become less worried about immigration to the UK over the past few years, 51% said that discussions about how much immigrants contribute to the UK were a reason for their changed view.

The impact of this research has been widespread and significant, guiding both public views and policy debates on immigration to the UK during this critical period. Its extensive citation during parliamentary debates and governmental reports attests to its critical influence in policy formation, while its far-reaching and sustained references in popular media demonstrate the extent to which its findings have become commonly accepted facts in the public discourse.