IPA researcher Chris Blattman thoughtfully considers what we know about anti-poverty programs that work, and how to make them better. Specifically, he looks at our research on the Graduation model, the six-pronged approach to helping the poorest of the poor, whose results were recently published in Science. One of this big costs of this and many similar approaches is the program staff spending time with beneficiaries. It sounds good, but is it necessary? Another IPA study from Uganda, described in a new brief (PDF) involved training, and a grant, but randomized the expensive staff follow-up visits, and found they were not effective enough to justify their cost. Read the full piece here, a summary on Chris' blog here, a short summary of the Uganda study here, and more on the Graduation approach here.