Özler, Berk

Person:
Özler, Berk

Development Research Group

Author Name Variants

Özler, Berk, Ozler, Berk, Özler, B., Ozler, B.

Fields of Specialization

Poverty and inequality, Social Protection, Gender, Maternal and Child Health

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Development Research Group

Last updated:April 14, 2025

Biography

Berk Özler is Lead Economist and Research Manager of the Poverty and Inequality Research Progam in the Development Research Group. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics from Bosphorous University in 1991, and his Ph.D in Economics from Cornell University in 2001. After working on poverty and inequality measurement, poverty mapping, and the 2006 World Development Report on Equity and Development earlier, he decided to combine his interests in cash transfer programs and HIV risks facing young women in Africa by designing a field experiment in Malawi. He has since been involved in a number of cluster-randomized field experiments. He is a co-founder of and a regular contributor to the Development Impact blog.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/38818

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Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 40

Improving the Well-Being of Adolescent Girls in Developing Countries
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-10-13) Bergstrom, Katy; Özler, Berk
This paper conducts a large, narrative review of interventions that might plausibly (a) increase educational attainment, (b) delay childbearing, and/or (c) delay marriage for adolescent girls in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using 108 interventions from 78 studies, predominantly in LMICs, the paper summarizes the performance of 15 categories of interventions in improving these outcomes. Transfer programs emerge as broadly effective in increasing educational attainment but their effects on delaying fertility and marriage remain mixed and dependent on context. Construction of schools in underserved areas and the provision of information on returns to schooling and academic performance also increase schooling. No category of interventions is found to be categorically effective in delaying pregnancies and reducing child marriages among adolescent girls. While targeted provision of sexual and reproductive health services, including vouchers and subsidies for family planning, and increasing job opportunities for women seem promising, more research is needed to evaluate the longer-term effects of such interventions. We propose that future studies should aim to measure short-term outcomes that can form good surrogates for long-term welfare gains and should collect detailed cost information.
Therapy, Mental Health, and Human Capital Accumulation among Adolescents in Uganda
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-17) Baird, Sarah; Özler, Berk; Dell'Aira, Chiara; Parisotto, Luca; Us-Salam, Danish
Using a cluster-randomized trial, this paper evaluates the impact of group-based interpersonal therapy on mental health and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda who were at risk of moderate or severe depression at baseline. The study was designed to test whether lay provider–led group-based interpersonal therapy for adolescents could be effectively scaled up using modest resources in a low-income country. It also tested whether a lump-sum cash transfer offered at the end of therapy provided any additional benefit. The findings show that group-based interpersonal therapy increased the share of adolescents with minimal depression by 20-30 percent 12 months after therapy, but these effects dissipated by the 24-month follow-up. Small short-term effects on human capital accumulation were also not sustained at 24 months. Surprisingly, the marginal effect of providing cash transfers to group-based interpersonal therapy beneficiaries on mental health was large and negative, persisting two years after baseline. The paper provides suggestive evidence that the adolescents were frustrated by their inability to use the cash toward their own goals because of the need to divert funds toward the essential needs of their families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Social Protection and Youth
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-01) Araujo, Caridad; Baird, Sarah; Das, Saini; Parisotto, Luca; Woldehanna, Tassew; Özler, Berk
This paper provides a narrative review of social protection policies for youth (ages 15–24) in low- and middle-income countries; assesses the state of the evidence on their impacts; and provides recommendations for policy and future research. It summarizes the findings by three groups of policies: transfers and scholarships, active labor market policies, and life skills programs. While social protection policies serve their primary purpose as safety nets, they do not have transformative effects for youth, overall. The paper highlights the tradeoffs that arise from using social protection programs to address particular market failures: many beneficiaries of popular programs are inframarginal. The impacts of social protection programs targeted to youth are likely to improve if there is higher human capital accumulation earlier in life and the programs account for age and gender, are of sufficient length and intensity, and are intentionally designed to address the underlying constraints and goals, including an understanding of important social norms in the settings in which they operate.
Improving the Well-Being of Adolescent Girls in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Bergstrom, Katy; Ozler, Berk
This paper conducts a large, narrative literature review of interventions that seek to (1) increase educational attainment, (2) delay childbearing, and/or (3) delay marriage for adolescent girls in developing countries. Using 104 interventions from 70 studies, predominantly in developing countries, the paper summarizes the performance of 16 categories of interventions in improving each of the three outcomes of interest. It then provides high-level policy strategies to improve each outcome, informed by this review. Finally, the paper discusses several promising future research avenues to help close knowledge gaps and, thus, improve policy guidance for enhancing the well-being of adolescent girls in developing settings.
A New Distribution Sensitive Index for Measuring Welfare, Poverty, and Inequality
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-22) Kraay, Aart; Lakner, Christoph; Özler, Berk; Decerf, Benoit; Jolliffe, Dean; Sterck, Olivier; Yonzan, Nishant
Simple welfare indices such as mean income are ubiquitous but not distribution sensitive. In contrast, existing distribution sensitive welfare indices are rarely used, often because they are difficult to explain and/or lack intuitive units. This paper proposes a simple new distribution sensitive welfare index with intuitive units: the average factor by which individual incomes must be multiplied to attain a given reference level of income. This new index is subgroup decomposable with population weights and satisfies the three main definitions of distribution sensitivity in the literature. Variants on this index can be used as distribution sensitive poverty measures and as inequality measures, with the same simple intuitive units. The properties of the new index are illustrated using the global distribution of income across individuals between 1990 and 2019, as well as with selected country comparisons. Finally, the index can be used to define the “prosperity gap” as a proposed new measure of “shared prosperity,” one of the twin goals of the World Bank.
Asset Transfers and Anti-Poverty Programs: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12) Baird, Sarah; McIntosh, Craig; Özler, Berk; Pape, Utz
This paper uses a set of randomized experiments to examine the impact of a group business development program implemented by the Tanzanian government, along with a set of complementary training and cash transfer interventions targeted to vulnerable households in rural areas. In contrast with much of the recent literature, the analysis finds little effect of the business development program. While most enterprises remain operative three years after formation, even the highest estimates of effective wage rates suggest returns roughly equivalent to the opportunity cost of time for these households. Trainings on business skills and group transparency did not improve outcomes, although they appear to have exerted a redistributive effect from group elites to rank and file members. Unconditional and unanticipated lump sum cash transfers to randomly selected members of these groups induce all members to invest more in the enterprise, with seemingly little to no return on these marginal investments. The results emphasize the importance of profitability as the key motivation for asset transfer–based social protection programs.
Shared Decision-Making: Can Improved Counseling Increase Willingness to Pay for Modern Contraceptives?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09) Athey, Susan; Bergstrom, Katy; Hadad, Vitor; Jamison, Julian C.; Ozler, Berk; Parisotto, Luca; Sama, Julius Dohbit
Long-acting reversible contraceptives are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies, but take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of interventions addressing two barriers to long-acting reversible contraceptive adoption, credit, and informational constraints. The study offered discounts to the clients of a women’s hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and cross-randomized a counseling strategy that encourages shared decision-making using a tablet-based app that ranks modern methods. Discounts increased uptake by 50 percent, with larger effects for adolescents. Shared decision-making tripled the share of clients adopting a long-acting reversible contraceptive at full price, from 11 to 35 percent, and discounts had no incremental impact in this group.
The Effects of Cash Transfers on Adult Labor Market Outcomes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-04) Baird, Sarah; McKenzie, David; Ozler, Berk
The basic economic model of labor supply has a very clear prediction of what should be expected when an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics and make recipients lazy. This paper discusses a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that can make this intuition misleading in low- and middle-income countries, including missing markets, price effects from conditions attached to transfers, and dynamic and general equilibrium effects. The paper uses this as a lens through which to examine the evidence on the adult labor market impacts of a wide range of cash transfer programs: government transfers, charitable giving and humanitarian transfers, remittances, cash assistance for job search, cash transfers for business start-up, and bundled interventions. Overall, cash transfers that are made without an explicit employment focus (such as conditional and unconditional cash transfers and remittances) tend to result in little to no change in adult labor. The main exceptions are transfers to the elderly and some refugees, who reduce work. In contrast, transfers made for job search assistance or business start-up tend to increase adult labor supply and earnings, with the likely main channels being the alleviation of liquidity and risk constraints.
Children on the Move: Progressive Redistribution of Humanitarian Cash Transfers among Refugees
(World Bank, Washington, DCW, 2020-11) Celik, Cigdem; Ozler, Berk; Cunningham, Scott; Cuevas, P. Facundo; Parisotto, Luca
This paper evaluates the impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, the largest cash transfer program for international refugees in the world. The paper provides prima facie evidence that the program quickly caused substantial changes in household size and composition, with a net movement of primarily school-age children from larger ineligible households to smaller eligible ones. A sharp decline in inequality is observed in the entire study population: the Gini index declined by four percentage points (or 15 percent) within six months of program rollout, and the poverty headcount at the $3.20/day international poverty line declined by more than 50 percent after one year. ESSN caused a moderate increase in the diversity and frequency of food consumption among eligible households, and although there was no statistically significant effect on overall school enrollment, there were meaningful gains among the most vulnerable beneficiary households. To strike the right balance between transfer size and coverage, key parameters in the design of any cash transfer program, policy makers should consider the possibility that refugee populations may respond to their eligibility status by altering their household structure and living arrangements.
Conditional, Unconditional and Everything in Between : A Systematic Review of the Effects of Cash Transfer Programs on Schooling Outcomes
(Taylor and Francis, 2014-03-06) Baird, Sarah; Ferreira, Francisco H.G.; Özler, Berk; Woolcock, Michael
Cash transfer programmes are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programmes should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programmes. Using data from 75 reports that cover 35 different studies, the authors find that both conditional cash transfers (CCTs) and unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) improve the odds of being enrolled in and attending school compared to no cash transfer programme. The effect sizes for enrolment and attendance are always larger for CCTs compared to UCTs, but the difference is not statistically significant. When programmes are categorised as having no schooling conditions, having some conditions with minimal monitoring and enforcement and having explicit conditions that are monitored and enforced, a much clearer pattern emerges whereby programmes that are explicitly conditional, monitor compliance and penalise non-compliance have substantively larger effects (60% improvement in odds of enrolment). Unlike enrolment and attendance, the effectiveness of cash transfer programmes on improving test scores is small at best. More research is needed that examines longer-term outcomes such as test scores and, more generally, evaluating the impacts of UCTs.