Jane G. Fortson
Senior Researcher

Jane Fortson is a senior researcher in Mathematica’s Oakland office. She is an expert in designing and conducting experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations; she has worked on projects in a range of areas, including international development, labor, and family and child well-being.

Fortson is project director and principal investigator for the evaluation of three Millennium Challenge Corporation-funded agricultural interventions in Moldova. The activities—which include an agricultural finance program, a farmer training program, and an irrigation rehabilitation program—are aimed at improving the transition to high-value agriculture. She is responsible for managing the project, designing the evaluations, and conducting the impact analyses. She has also served as a methods expert for a range of other studies, including the evaluation of a cocoa farmer training program in West and Central Africa sponsored by the World Cocoa Foundation and an econometric analysis of Job Corps performance measures for the U.S. Department of Labor. She has been involved in random assignment and impact analyses for the evaluation of Playworks, a program that places full-time coaches in low-income schools to organize games during recess and throughout the school day with the goal of increasing students’ physical activity and improving behavior and conflict resolution skills.

Fortson has presented to numerous international and U.S. audiences and has published in major academic journals, including the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Demography, the Journal of Human Resources, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.

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