For years, policymakers have debated different approaches to helping the poor — everything from building schools, to delivering soccer balls that produce electricity. But new data, published in May after a nine-year, six-country study, offers resounding evidence for a strategy that works. A group of my economist colleagues and I, together with the research and policy non-profit Innovations for Poverty Action, and MIT’s J-PAL, tested an approach known as a “Graduation” program. The program is designed to boost the livelihoods of the “ultra-poor” — the 1 billion people worldwide who live on less than $1.25 per day.

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