Translating economic growth into better lives

Solving complex social problems with multiple interrelated causes can involve juggling a variety of factors. Securing funding, designing the right programs, and sustaining the political will necessary to implement them demands a targeted approach.Lyonel Tanganco, a graduate student in MIT’s Master in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP) program, seeks to connect data, policy, and practice-based community interventions to improve living conditions and service delivery in middle-income countries. His studies have allowed him to work with innovative practitioners making real improvements in the world, he says.“There’s innovation at work in middle-income countries,” says Tanganco, a native of the Philippines. “Seeing the attitudes to adopt and scale new policies and procedures to improve lives has been very interesting to me.” Taking those innovative practices and investigating their adaptability and potential to scale is at the heart of Tanganco’s research and work. “How do we make growth broad-based and inclusive?” he asks.The DEDP master’s program, jointly run by MIT’s Department of Economics and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), equips development professionals from across the globe with the practical skills and theoretical knowledge needed to tackle these and other kinds of challenges. J-PAL seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence — conducting randomized impact evaluations; helping governments, nongovernmental organizations, donors, and the private sector apply the resulting evidence to their work; and training researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and donors to generate and use that evidence.Designing a path to more effective policies and practicesBefore arriving at MIT, Tanganco earned degrees in management science and economics, graduating at the top of his class from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He was previously the director of the Policy, Research, and Liaison Office in the Philippine Department of Finance. His work focused on helping develop the nation’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak, tax policy reform, and communications support for key policy initiatives.“During my time in government, we sought to increase revenues for health care and increase outlays for health-care programs,” he says. “We were thinking about health care from the financing perspective.” Tanganco’s efforts helped increase taxes on cigarettes, vaping, and alcohol products, which funded a sixfold increase in the health-care budget. Allocating more funding for health care, he says, may yield better outcomes. Additionally, Tanganco supported reforms to increase taxation on top Filipino income earners while lowering taxes for others, which the government subsequently implemented. Later, he and some of his colleagues formed a “policy think-and-do tank” — Malusog at Matalinong Bata Coalition (Smart and Healthy Kids Coalition) — that collaborates closely with government agencies on large-scale social programs. There, he played a key role in designing and advancing a conditional cash transfer program aimed at addressing malnutrition that now reaches more than 190,000 Filipino households. “The program gives families the equivalent of $12 per month under the condition that they bring their children for regular monthly checkups,” Tanganco says. “It increased health-seeking behavior eightfold.”While he saw success in implementing these programs, Tanganco still found gaps in both knowledge and implementation he thought he could close by enrolling in a program like DEDP. “I wanted a graduate program that taught me what I couldn’t get from a professional career,” he says.Expanding research into targeted areasTanganco describes living in a middle-income country as “living in two contradictory worlds at the same time.” “I’ve seen gleaming metropolitan skylines alongside underserved communities; pockets of affluence surrounded by persistent poverty; world-class hospitals alongside children who still lack access to basic health care,” he says. “The through line in my work is figuring out how to help middle-income countries translate economic growth to better lives and better human outcomes.” His DEDP studies have taken him to Indonesia this summer for work on a capstone project with economist Benjamin Olken, the TEPCO Professor of Economics and co-faculty director of J-PAL. The research, conducted in collaboration with Indonesian local governments, involves the design and rollout of a randomized evaluation of a tax intervention. “So far, I’ve visited and conferred with several local Indonesian governments to assess tax administration issues,” he says. Investigating Indonesian governmental interventions may help improve service delivery and support. One of the ways Tanganco hopes to help Indonesians, Filipinos, and others is by developing tools to raise revenues in simple, effective, and fair ways, making it easier to improve constituent sentiment and service delivery. Tanganco wants to help policymakers and others understand how politics and other factors influence areas like investments in nutrition and environment. His studies have sharpened his investigative approach in these critical areas.In the Philippines, for example, one-in-four children is malnourished. “Children who lack proper nutrition before age 2 develop smaller brains, perform worse in school and work, and are far more likely to remain in poverty,” Tanganco reports. “Their potential is capped before they get the chance to use it.”  Middle-income countries also suffer disproportionately from climate-change-related impacts. “Typhoons and extreme heat severely disrupt learning and economic growth in the Philippines,” Tanganco says. “More than a tenth of school days are lost because of climate issues.” Essentially, without improved policies and practices alongside a sustained effort to improve lives, “we’re losing extraordinary opportunities for human advancement to wasted potential,” Tanganco believes. “Experiences like that abound,” he says. From the classroom to the next chapter Tanganco values opportunities to range beyond his DEDP studies. He fondly remembers completing a doctoral-level course in environmental economics co-taught by Olken and Jacob Moscona, the 3M Career Development Assistant Professor of Economics. Its focus on research appealed to him. “I was glad to have time to think about the problems I’m trying to solve,” he says.Tanganco also enjoyed exploring Greater Boston with his wife — a graduate student at Harvard University — and his fellow DEDP students. From restaurants to concerts with other music nerds, he appreciates the time they spent outside the classroom. “We discuss our hopes and our home countries’ challenges,” he enthuses. “I’m excited to see what folks will do after this.”Tanganco is especially pleased with the Institute’s commitment to ensuring scholarship centers an interdisciplinary approach. He likens the MIT educational style to “Avatar: The Last Airbender’s” Uncle Iroh, who recommends drawing wisdom from a variety of elements to ensure wisdom doesn’t grow stale. These and additional opportunities to step outside his previously defined areas of expertise left a lasting impact on him. “Everyone at MIT is open to collaboration,” he says. “There are a lot of thinkers and doers here, and you don’t have to work hard to convince other students to help you.”As Tanganco continues his work, he encourages practitioners — doctors, nutritionists, and community health workers, for example — to partner with economists and other researchers to translate their expertise into quantifiable metrics policymakers can understand. “Develop an eye for impact,” he adds.Enrolling in the DEDP program “has been game-changing,” Tanganco concludes. “The program provides a solid foundation for understanding the world and how to make a positive, measurable difference in the lives of other people, especially the least fortunate among us.”