Hina Usman, graduate student in the Department of Economics, has received a $9,600 grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) to study recidivism in Pakistan. She’ll be conducting an experimental evaluation of a criminal rehabilitation program that focuses on enhancing the skill base of people who are incarcerated in the country. 

“While academics have studied the effectiveness of such programs in developed countries and Latin America, there exists limited evidence of their efficacy in the developing world,” Usman says.

Funding from the grant will allow her to conduct a survey that will be critical in assessing current skills and knowledge about existing vocational skills training schools in the local area.

Usman completed her undergraduate degree in economics in 2016 at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan and she began her graduate study at UCI in 2017.