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Schooling rewards people with labor market returns and nonpecuniary benefits in other realms of life. However, there is no experimental evidence showing that education interventions improve individual economic rationality. We examine this hypothesis by studying a randomized 1-year financial support program for education in Malawi that reduced absence and dropout rates and increased scores on a qualification exam of female secondary school students. We measure economic rationality 4 years after the intervention by using lab-in-the-field experiments to create scores of consistency with utility maximization that are derived from revealed preference theory. We find that students assigned to the intervention had higher scores of rationality. The results remain robust after controlling for changes in cognitive and noncognitive skills. Our results suggest that education enhances the quality of economic decision-making. R ationality in human choices has been a cornerstone assumption in traditional economic analysis and yet one of the most controversial issues in social and behavioral sciences (1). Mounting evidence shows that people tend to make systematic errors in judgment and decision-making and that there is a high level of heterogeneity in the extent to which rationality is limited across decisions and individuals (2, 3). The welfare loss resulting from poor decisions can be substantial, which implies that policy-makers might want to rethink the role of public policy in response to the failure of rationality (4).The behavioral science literature has accumulated evidence on ways of improving people's capabilities and quality of decision-making: changing incentives, restructuring choice architecture, and debiasing training (5-7). Most of these approaches target the reduction of decision biases in particular contexts of economic activities but do not address the improvement of general capabilities of decision-making that are transferrable across decision domains. It is often controversial to judge whether decision biases are driven by the failure of rationality or other factors such as anomalous preferences.Schooling has been shown to influence a wide range of outcomes, including income, health, and crime (8,9). One little-explored hypothesis is that education improves people's decision-making abilities and leads them to make better decisions across various choice environments. The impacts of education on decision-making can then be a potential mechanism underlying the pecuniary and nonpecuniary returns to education.We examine this hypothesis by studying a nongovernmental organization-implemented randomized controlled trial of education support in Malawi, an environment where, among young females, only 21.4% have received some secondary education and 9.8% have completed secondary school education (10). The program randomly provided financial support for education in a sample of 2812 female 9th and 10th graders from 83 classrooms in 33 public schools between the third semester of the academic year 2011-2012 and the seco...

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The Lancet COVID-19 Commission Task Force for Public Health Measures to Suppress the Pandemic was launched to identify critical points for consideration by governments on public health interventions to control coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Drawing on our review of published studies of data analytics and modelling, evidence synthesis and contextualisation, and behavioural science evidence and theory on public health interventions from a range of sources, we outline evidence for a range of institutional measures and behaviour-change measures. We cite examples of measures adopted by a range of countries, but especially jurisdictions that have, thus far, achieved low numbers of COVID-19 deaths and limited community transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Finally, we highlight gaps in knowledge where research should be undertaken. As countries consider long-term measures, there is an opportunity to learn, improve the response and prepare for future pandemics.

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