Development Analytics

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Development Analytics

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DevelopmentAnalytics provides evidence based research for social program and policy development. www.developmentanalytics.org

Our main areas of study are poverty, education, health, social protection and the overall distributional impact of social policies. We specialize in large scale data analysis and statistical methods for social research. Our clients include central governments, international development organizations, NGOs (as well as corporate clients with a social responsibility vision). We provide our clients with research and tools to (i) understand and diagnose social problems, (ii) devise programs to tackle these issues and (iii) to measure and rigorously evaluate their results.

27/10/2026

🌍 Building the Evidence Base for Stronger Care and Support Systems

Observed annually on 29 October, the International Day of Care and Support highlights the importance of investing in inclusive, gender-responsive care systems that recognize, value and redistribute care responsibilities. Development Analytics’ work with UNICEF contributes to this agenda by examining how policies, programmes and partnerships can better support children, caregivers and families.

📘 Development Analytics completed the Stocktaking of UNICEF’s Work on Care and Support, including Family-Friendly Policies for UNICEF Headquarters last year, providing a comprehensive global picture of UNICEF’s engagement in this increasingly important area.

🔎 The study examined UNICEF’s work globally across 129 Country Offices, drawing on qualitative and quantitative evidence from Country Office Annual Reports, Core Standard Indicators, Country Programme Documents, and 11 in-depth country office case studies. It explored how UNICEF has supported governments, generated evidence, implemented programmes and built partnerships to advance care and family-friendly policies.

📈 One of the clearest findings was the substantial expansion of UNICEF’s engagement in care and support from 2022 onwards. Childcare and early childhood education, parenting services, child benefits, and disability-related support emerged as areas of particularly strong engagement. At the same time, the stocktake highlighted areas where greater policy and programming attention is needed, including paid parental leave and flexible working arrangements.

🌐 Building on this global work, a similar study was subsequently conducted with a specific focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in collaboration with the UNICEF MENA Regional Office, providing an opportunity to examine regional patterns, priorities and gaps in greater depth.

💡 These analyses reinforced the importance of a more comprehensive care systems approach—bringing together services, cash transfers, workplace policies, legislation and institutional mechanisms, alongside efforts to address restrictive social norms. Building these elements into a coherent system can help countries respond more effectively and equitably to the diverse needs of children, caregivers and families.

🤝 We are pleased to have contributed to this growing evidence base and to the wider discussion on how more integrated care and support systems can strengthen outcomes for children and families.

📄 Please find the associated policy brief summarizing the findings of the Global Stocktake for UNICEF at the following link:

https://clearinghouse.unicef.org/sites/ch/files/ch/sites-PD-SocialPolicy-GA5%20at%20KU-UNICEF%20Care%20and%20Support%20Brochure-2.0.pdf

20/10/2026

How can governments maximise the impact of social spending on children?

📚 A new OECD report, Spending Better for Children through Social Policy (2026), explores how governments can make more effective use of public resources to improve outcomes for children and reduce child poverty.

Reducing child poverty requires more than increasing social spending. It also requires understanding which policy interventions are most effective, how they complement one another, and what resources are needed to deliver meaningful and sustainable results.

Income support plays a critical role in helping families meet their needs. However, its impact can be strengthened when combined with accessible services, including childcare, education and health care, alongside policies that support parents’ employment opportunities.

This is where evidence-informed policy analysis becomes essential.

💡At Development Analytics, social policy microsimulation and costing studies help policymakers assess the potential effects of alternative policy designs before implementation. Microsimulation can estimate how changes to benefit eligibility, transfer amounts and programme coverage may affect child poverty and government expenditure. Costing studies help establish the resources required to expand services, including early childhood education and care.

By bringing these approaches together, policymakers can better understand the trade-offs between policy impact, coverage and fiscal affordability, supporting decisions that respond to children’s needs while making effective use of public resources.

Investing in children is essential. Understanding how to make that investment count is equally important.

📘 To read the OECD report: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/spending-better-for-children-through-social-policy_1d6fb668-en.html

🔗 To learn more about DA’s designing and costing early childhood education (ECE) service expansion for maximum impact, please visit: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/designing-and-costing-ece

14/10/2026

How do we move from evidence on what works in early childhood development (ECD) to understanding what it takes to implement and scale it?

📄 Cost evidence is an important part of that process. Yet, as the new Brookings guidance Making Costs Count highlights, cost data across education and early childhood care and education remain fragmented and are not always generated or used in ways that support policy and investment decisions. The guidance, developed through the Global Costing Taskforce for Education and ECCE, sets out harmonized standards for generating, analysing, reporting and using cost evidence. Importantly, it encourages costing to start with the decision that the evidence is intended to inform—helping connect methodological choices with real policy and financing questions.

📚This perspective is closely aligned with Development Analytics’ work on ECD and education investment cases. In our work, costing is considered alongside population needs, service coverage, delivery models and available resources to help examine different investment options. The question is not only “How much does an intervention cost?”, but also “What would different levels of investment make possible, for whom, and at what scale?”. This is also where costing connects with our broader work on policy modelling and simulation. Bringing cost evidence together with demographic and socioeconomic data allows different policy scenarios to be explored and their potential fiscal and social implications to be considered. For ECD in particular, strengthening the link between costs, evidence and policy choices is essential for developing investment cases that are both analytically grounded and relevant to the decisions governments face.

The Brookings guidance provides a useful contribution to this conversation and a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of ECD, education financing and policy analysis.

🔗 To read the full guidance:https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/FINAL-MakingCostsCount-GCT-Brookings.pdf

🔗 To learn more DA’s approach in designing and costing early childhood education (ECE) service expansion for maximum impact: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/designing-and-costing-ece

🔗 To review a summary of our study on ECE Investment and Costing Analysis in Türkiye: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/ece-investment-and-costing-analysis-in-t%C3%BCrkiye

23/09/2026

Development Analytics was present at the 7th edition of the Women in Technology Forum (The 2050 Mindset), hosted at the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park (SRTIP). The event brought together global leaders and innovators to discuss how forward-thinking technological strategy can drive sustainable development and social impact. Across high-level sessions—including Leading Through Uncertainty, Tech for Good: Women Building Community Impact, Innovation Through Diverse Perspectives, and Securing the Future: Cybersecurity & Sustainable Technology for 2050—the forum emphasized that creating resilient tech ecosystems for 2050 requires inclusive leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration at every level.

As a female-led organization, Development Analytics is deeply committed to applying technological innovation to address complex economic and social challenges. Participating in discussions focused on "The 2050 Mindset" aligns directly with DA’s mission to leverage data visualization, quantitative analysis, and evidence-based modeling for social policy. The forum reinforced the necessity of integrating diverse leadership into the design of digital infrastructure and analytical tools, ensuring that emerging technology remains grounded in equity, sustainability, and community impact.

🔗To learn more about our work: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/

🔗To learn more about the Women in Technology Forum: https://sharjahrtipark.zohobackstage.com/WIT26

11/09/2026

Strengthening Shock-Responsive Social Protection Systems

📘 UNICEF’s Programme Guidance and Operational Notes: Strengthening Shock-Responsive Social Protection Systems provides practical guidance on how countries can strengthen social protection systems so they are better prepared to respond to shocks and crises. Published in June 2026, the guidance considers a range of risks, including climate-related events, conflict, displacement, economic shocks, and other emergencies that can rapidly affect household wellbeing and increase vulnerability.

🌍 A key message of the publication is that effective shock response should not rely solely on temporary or parallel humanitarian mechanisms. Instead, countries can build social protection systems with the flexibility, delivery infrastructure, data, coordination mechanisms, and financing arrangements needed to scale up support when crises occur. This approach can help governments respond more quickly while strengthening the resilience of national systems over the longer term.

📊 The guidance is particularly relevant to ongoing efforts to make social protection more adaptive and inclusive. By connecting preparedness, risk analysis, social protection delivery systems, and crisis response, it provides a useful framework for policymakers and practitioners seeking to protect vulnerable populations in an increasingly uncertain environment.

💡This focus on preparedness and scalability is also reflected in Development Analytics’ work supporting UNICEF in Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Tajikistan to develop costed contingency actions and analyse pre-arranged financing for shock-responsive social protection. Through country-specific ISPS microsimulation tools, the project estimates how floods could affect poverty and assesses how different cash-transfer approaches could help mitigate these impacts. By combining poverty analysis, microsimulation, emergency cash assistance and financing strategies, the work aims to strengthen governments’ readiness to scale up social protection quickly when shocks occur—putting evidence into practice to support more timely and effective responses.

🔗 To learn more about UNICEF’s Programme Guidance and Operational Notes: Strengthening Shock-Responsive Social Protection Systems, please visit: https://www.unicef.org/documents/programme-guidance-and-operational-notes-strengthening-shock-responsive-social-protection

🔗 To learn more about our study, please read the summary report: https://knowledge.unicef.org/ECAR/resource/developing-costed-contingency-actions-and-undertaking-analysis-pre-arranged-financing

19/08/2026

📄 We are pleased to share the recent publication by our DA associate Güneş Aşık, published by the World Bank as Social Policy & Labor Discussion Paper No. 2704, "Artificial Intelligence and Labor Market Adjustment in Türkiye: Exposure and Complementarity," co-authored with Siddharth Hari, Efşan Nas Özen, and Dhushyanth Raju.

🔍 The paper provides a systematic diagnostic of how AI-related technological potential is distributed across Türkiye's labor market, applying occupation-level measures of AI exposure and task complementarity to nationally representative labor force survey data and employer-employee administrative records. The findings show that around 41% of employment in Türkiye is in occupations with relatively high exposure to AI, but the scope for productivity-enhancing complementarity varies substantially across occupations, sectors, and worker groups—with women, formal-sector workers, and those in metropolitan regions like İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir more concentrated in high-exposure jobs. Despite this widespread exposure, the authors find that employment and labor demand patterns across exposure categories have remained largely stable in recent years, suggesting that technological potential alone does not automatically translate into labor market disruption.

📊 Importantly, the paper argues that the economic consequences of AI in Türkiye are likely to unfold gradually, shaped less by the breadth of technological capability than by the economy's capacity to translate that capability into productivity gains through firm adoption, workforce skills, and complementary institutional adjustments. Drawing on firm interviews, vacancy data, and international evidence, the authors identify key policy priorities—expanding AI adoption among SMEs, strengthening workforce skills and lifelong learning, supporting labor market adjustment and inclusion, and building Türkiye's broader AI ecosystem—as central to ensuring that AI's productivity benefits are broadly shared.

🔗 To read the full paper, please follow this link:
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099704407242668121/pdf/IDU-99871a38-9f7d-44fc-bc04-936ea45d60f5.pdf

🔗 To learn more about Dr Güneş Aşık’s work and experience, please follow this link:
https://www.developmentanalytics.org/team/g%C3%BCne%C5%9F-a%C5%9F%C4%B1k%2C-ph.d.-

14/08/2026

The ECE Investment and Costing Analysis in Türkiye

💡 ECE enrolment has grown over the past decade in Türkiye, but lags behind the OECD averages. In 2024–25, 82.5% of 5-year-olds were enrolled in pre-primary education and 49.0% of 3–5 year olds, against an OECD average of 83.7%.

📖 To help inform the policy discussion around further expansion, Development Analytics carried out the “Early Childhood Education (ECE) Costing Analysis in Türkiye” for UNICEF Türkiye, published in 2024.

It answers two connected questions: what would expansion cost, and who actually benefits?

📊 A key output of the work was an interactive, Excel-based simulation tool — the ECE Costing Model with Distributional Analysis — adapted from UNICEF’s ECE Accelerator Simulation Model.

📊 Across four scenarios including both supply side and demand side measures — from free public kindergartens to mixed models with subsidised private providers and municipal crèches — improving access significantly for 3-5-year-olds was found to be achievable and at different costs according to the implemented scenario.

📊 Different scenarios generate different implications for total investment and operating costs, the balance of financing between actors, and, importantly, how equitably additional ECE places are distributed across income groups.

🔗 We have now brought the main findings of this work together in a new interactive summary report — explore the scenarios, costs and distributional results here: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/ece-investment-and-costing-analysis-in-t%C3%BCrkiye

🔗 To learn more about DA's work on ECE costing and investment analysis, visit: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/designing-and-costing-ece

🔗 If you're interested in exploring a similar costing and distributional analysis for early childhood education in your own country, get in touch via this form: https://form.jotform.com/241124655192958

07/08/2026

Costing and designing Early Childhood Education (ECE) service expansion for maximum impact

Investing in ECE is a pivotal strategy for fostering child development that sets children on a path for a more equitable future. With so many available models to expand ECE services, costing different options and assessing which children benefit from each offers invaluable insights for policy making.

In the last decade, we have led various research projects related to ECE and education outcomes for various organizations, including the World Bank, UNICEF, and Agence Française de Développement (AfD). We have extensive experience in devising simulation models to assess the anticipated impact of social policies and programs on population and child outcomes, along with calculating the total costs associated with such policies. Our experience further extends to devising simulation models specifically tailored for ECE expansion policies.

Our approach doesn't stop at analysis; we are actively engaged in presenting the research through interactive tools. Such tools empower stakeholders to explore different scenarios, compare and contrast them through examining several indicators and refine their decisions based on real-time data insights.

📖 Read more about our projects on estimating the distributional impact and costs of ECE services expansion policies here: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/designing-and-costing-ece

🔗 Or if you're interested in learning more about conducting a study in your country, click here to arrange a meeting: https://form.jotform.com/241124655192958

31/07/2026

📚 Publication Highlight

The Handbook on Child Poverty and Inequality, edited by Alberto Minujin and Enrique Delamonica, is a significant contribution to the growing body of research focused on understanding poverty through a child-centered lens. Bringing together insights from leading scholars and practitioners, the handbook examines the complex and multidimensional nature of poverty and inequality experienced by children across diverse social and economic contexts.

🔍 A key strength of the handbook lies in its strong emphasis on multidimensionality. Rather than treating child poverty as solely an income-based phenomenon, the volume expands the analytical lens to include education, health, nutrition, housing, social protection, disability, gender disparities, and broader structural inequalities. It also engages critically with methodological challenges in measuring child poverty, highlighting approaches that better reflect children’s lived experiences across different stages of life and contexts. This makes it an important reference for both researchers and policymakers working on child well-being and social development.

🌍 This handbook is a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, development professionals, and students seeking evidence-based perspectives on child poverty and inequality. Its interdisciplinary scope and global relevance make it an important reference for informing policies and interventions aimed at improving the lives and opportunities of children worldwide.

💡 In practice, these methodological advancements are increasingly being applied to real-world policy challenges. For example, Development Analytics works at the intersection of research and implementation by combining monetary and multidimensional poverty measurement approaches to support child-focused policy design. Our work integrates tools such as the Multiple Overlapping Deprivations Analysis (MODA), the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), and microsimulation models to better identify vulnerable children and assess policy impacts. This includes supporting governments and partners in designing child benefit programmes, simulating policy scenarios, and strengthening evidence-based decision-making in diverse country contexts.

🔗 To learn more about DA’s work: https://www.developmentanalytics.org/tackling-child-poverty

🔗 Handbook: https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook/book/9781802200430/9781802200430.xml

🔗 Review: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/book-review-handbook-child-poverty-and-inequality

26/06/2026

Making Women’s Deprivation Visible: Multidimensional Poverty Analysis for Gender-Responsive Policy.

🔎 Understanding women’s poverty requires looking beyond income alone. While 11.4% of women and 10.9% of men worldwide live in extreme monetary poverty, these figures often rely on the assumption that household resources are shared equally among all members. In reality, many women experience forms of deprivation that remain hidden in conventional poverty measures, including limited access to education, employment opportunities, services, time, and decision-making power. A multidimensional approach helps reveal these realities and provides a more comprehensive understanding of women’s wellbeing.

📊 A gender-sensitive multidimensional poverty analysis allows governments and development partners to identify which groups of women face the greatest risks of deprivation, including adolescent girls, women with disabilities, older women, migrant women, and those living in disadvantaged communities. By examining the prevalence and intensity of deprivation across multiple dimensions, policymakers can better understand how poverty is experienced and where interventions can have the greatest impact.

🤝 At Development Analytics, we support governments and development partners in generating evidence that informs gender-responsive social protection, employment, and care policies. Drawing on nationally representative surveys and qualitative research, our work helps identify the drivers of women’s multidimensional poverty and translates evidence into practical policy solutions. If you are interested in exploring women’s multidimensional poverty, care responsibilities, and economic empowerment in your country, we would be pleased to discuss how such a study could support your policy priorities.

🔗If you are interested in exploring women’s multidimensional poverty in your country, register your interest here: https://form.jotform.com/261741530847459

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