Opportunity, Development & Agency

Poverty statistics count what people lack. ODA measures what they can do, and tests which policies widen their choices. Research and evidence for the Global South.

Read ODA Weekly Our research

ConditionsWork, services, prices, shocks
OpportunitiesWhat a person could do or be
AgencyChoices made and acted on
OutcomesWellbeing achieved, which feeds back into conditions

Each arrow is a question we test. The shaded stages are what ODA measures.

ODA Weekly

No. 2 · October 19th 2026 · Updated every Monday

ODA PickPolicy · GlobalGlobal multidimensional poverty rises for the first time since 2010The number of people in acute multidimensional poverty has risen for the first time since 2010. Most of the increase is population growth and Nigeria; the deeper problem is how old the data are.Read the full issue →

Academic

PeruIn rural Peru, a ballot box reveals violence that standard surveys miss MexicoIn Mexico, dry spells raise recorded violence against women IndiaIn India's joint households, the daughter-in-law does the housework

Policy

PeruIn Loreto, Peru's ombudsman counts over 218 mothers younger than 14 Bolivia · PeruThe IMF expects Bolivia's economy to shrink by 3% this year BoliviaBolivia sets a monthly allowance for children orphaned by femicide

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ODA Perspectives · This week's perspective

The case that cash curbs partner violence rests on fragile surveys

A decade of trials suggests that transfers to women reduce intimate partner violence. A new experiment in Peru shows that the surveys behind that finding miss some of the violence that money can trigger.

ODA Editorial Team · October 19th 2026 · 6 min read

Every week, one development problem raised by the news, and what the research literature can and cannot tell us about it.

12 sources, each labelled by study design

Read the perspective

The problem

Counting what people lack is not enough

Two households with the same income can face very different choices. One has a school nearby, a clinic that opens and a job market that pays for skills; the other has none of these. Poverty statistics rarely see the difference. ODA builds the measures that do, and asks which policies change it.

Our approach →

Research

Four lines of work

Measuring opportunity and agency

When does a survey capture choice, and when does it capture lowered expectations?

The people averages hide

Poverty and inequality, broken down by gender, age, language and place.

Work, services and opportunity

How jobs, water, energy and health care shape the options a household has.

Gender, households and agency

Who decides, and what changes when public services do.

Founder

Paola Ballon

A development economist who measures poverty, capabilities and agency, and the conditions that shape them. Co-author of Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Hope, R., & Ballon, P. (2021). Individual choices and universal rights for drinking water in rural Africa. PNAS, 118(40), e2105953118.
Ballon, P. (2018). A structural equation model of female empowerment. Journal of Development Studies, 54(8), 1303–1320.
Krishnakumar, J., & Ballon, P. (2008). Estimating basic capabilities: a structural equation model applied to Bolivia. World Development, 36(6), 992–1010.

Full profile