Munshi Sulaiman

Empowering adolescent girls : evidence from a randomized control trial in Uganda

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Empowering adolescent girls : evidence from a randomized control trial in Uganda, conducted in the year between June and September 2008, in Uganda. The study observed that nearly 60 percent of Ugandas population is aged below 20. This generation faces health and economic challenges associated with HIV, early pregnancy and unemployment. Whether these challenges are due to a lack of information and/or vocational skills is however uncertain. The program significantly increases self-reported entrepreneurial skills. There is a 4.2 percentage point increase in likelihood of participation in income earning activities, which represents a 32 percent increase. Almost all of this increase is seen in self-employment activities. Funding for the study derives from Bank Netherlands, MasterCard, Nike, The Gender Action Plan, improving institutions for Pro-Poor Growth at DFID.

Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa ¤

Women in developing countries are disempowered: high youth unemployment, early marriage and childbearing interact to limit their investments into human capital and enforce dependence on men. We evaluate a multifaceted policy intervention attempting to jump-start adolescent womens empowerment in Uganda, a context in which 60% of the population are aged below twenty. The intervention aims to relax human capital constraints that adolescent girls face by simultaneously providing them vocational training and information on sex, reproduction and marriage. We find that four years post-intervention, adolescent girls in treated communities are 4.9pp more likely to engage in income generating activities, corresponding to a 48% increase over baseline levels, and an impact almost entirely driven by their greater engagement in self-employment. Teen pregnancy falls by a third, and early entry into marriage/cohabitation also falls rapidly. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops by close to a third and aspired ages at which to marry and start childbearing move forward. The results highlight the potential of a multifaceted program that provides skills transfers as a viable and cost effective policy intervention to improve the economic and social empowerment of adolescent girls over a four year horizon.

Community Based Change Ranking to Assess the Impact of a Programme for the Ultra Poor

Abstract Studies of poverty dynamics relying solely on household income–expenditure surveys can overestimate transient poverty and underestimate persistence of poverty, especially for the poorest. In this study, we make use of an approach that relies on community based change ranking to explore various directions and levels of change experienced by almost 6000 households living in over 100 communities. We find that changes are initial condition dependent and that improvement, even small ones, are far less likely to happen over time for the poorest. An intervention that combines promotional and protective supports can bring such improvements in the livelihood of the ultra poor. Understanding the extent of and the forces that drive such smaller movements is important since it is the cumulative dynamics that ultimately lead to the larger movements of ascent, descent and trap, especially for the ultra poor.