Research
ODA's work runs along four lines, each growing out of a strand of its founder's published research. One concern cuts across them all: building measures that governments can actually use to target, monitor and evaluate policy.
Measuring opportunity and agency
Methods for measuring things that cannot be observed directly; whether scales of agency and empowerment capture choice or merely lowered expectations; how to pick indicators and spot redundant ones. This is ODA's methodological core.
Builds on: capabilities as latent variables (Bolivia, 2008); structural models of empowerment (2018); redundancy in poverty measures (2023).
Poverty, inequality and the people averages hide
Monetary and multidimensional poverty side by side; child poverty; inequalities between groups defined by gender, ethnicity, language and place; data fine-grained enough to see small and vulnerable groups.
Builds on: why child monetary and multidimensional poverty differ (2018); poverty in Sudan and South Sudan (2016); the Alkire-Foster book (2015).
Work, services and the economics of opportunity
Informality and the changing nature of work; water, energy, connectivity and health care as preconditions for choice; the welfare costs of shocks.
Builds on: inequality and work in Peru (2020); water choices and rights in rural Africa (2019, 2021); resilience after natural hazards (2020).
Gender, households and agency
Who makes decisions inside the household; women's time and agency; how public services shift who decides what. A developing line of work.
Builds on: the 2018 special section on measuring female empowerment and agency; psychological agency in Bamako (2018).