Publication: The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola: Lessons from an Empowerment Program
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2018-12
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2019-02-05
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The authors evaluate an intervention to raise young women’s economic empowerment in Sierra Leone, where women frequently experience sexual violence and face multiple economic disadvantages. The intervention provides them with a protective space (a club) where they can find support, receive information on health or reproductive issues and vocational training. Unexpectedly, the post-baseline period coincided with the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Our analysis documents the impact of the Ebola outbreak on the economic lives of 4,700 women tracked over the crisis, and any ameliorating role played by the intervention. In highly disrupted control villages, the crisis leads younger girls to spend significantly more time with men, out-of-wedlock pregnancies rise, and as a result, they experience a persistent 16pp drop in school enrolment post-crisis. These adverse effects are almost entirely reversed in treated villages because the intervention enables young girls to allocate time away from men, preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and enabling them to re-enroll in school post-crisis. In treated villages, the unavailability of young women leads some older girls to use transactional sex as a coping strategy. The intervention causes them to increase contraceptive use so this does not translate into higher fertility.
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“Bandiera, Oriana; Buehren, Niklas; Goldstein, Markus; Rasul, Imran; Smurra, Andrea. 2018. The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola: Lessons from an Empowerment Program. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31219 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02)This paper evaluates an intervention to raise young women's economic empowerment in Sierra Leone, where women frequently experience sexual violence and face multiple economic disadvantages. The intervention provides them with a protective space (a club) where they can find support, receive information on health and reproductive issues, and vocational training. Unexpectedly, the post-baseline period coincided with the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The analysis leverages quasi-random across-village variation in the severity of Ebola-related disruption, and random assignment of villages to the intervention to document the impact of the Ebola outbreak on the economic lives of 4,700 women tracked over the crisis, and any ameliorating role played by the intervention. In highly disrupted control villages, the crisis leads younger girls to spend significantly more time with men, out-of-wedlock pregnancies rise, and as a result, they experience a persistent 16 percentage points drop in school enrolment post-crisis. These adverse effects are almost entirely reversed in treated villages because the intervention enables young girls to allocate time away from men, preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and enabling them to re-enrol in school post-crisis. In treated villages, the unavailability of young women leads some older girls to use transactional sex as a coping strategy. The intervention causes them to increase contraceptive use so this does not translate into higher fertility. The analysis pinpoints the mechanisms through which the severity of the aggregate shock impacts the economic lives of young women and shows how interventions in times of crisis can interlink outcomes across younger and older cohorts.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls in a Crisis Context(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-07)In Sierra Leone, the empowerment and livelihoods for adolescents (ELA) initiative sought to enhance adolescent girls’ social and economic empowerment by providing life skills training, livelihood training, and credit support to start income-generating activities. The Ebola crisis occurred during the project, resulting in curbed implementation. In contrast, younger girls (12 to 17 years old) who resided in communities that benefitted from the program in high Ebola disruption areas were more likely to be in school and saw their numeracy and literacy levels improve. However, as younger women spend less time with men in the presence of ELA, men likely shift their attention to older girls: the evaluation finds an increase in unwanted and transactional sex by older girls in areas highly exposed to the Ebola crisis. As the program was implemented, the Ebola epidemic hit Sierra Leone. First, in an effort to stem the spread of the disease, the government-imposed quarantines, limited travel, and closed public spaces such as markets in certain areas, which significantly impacted the economic activities of men and women. Second, schools were closed for an entire academic year. Finally, Sierra Leone’s limited health resources were diverted into caring for patients and preventing the spread of the epidemic, limiting their ability to attend to other issues such as sexual and reproductive health. These results show how safe spaces interventions can be effective even in the face of large-scale shocks such as Ebola crises as seen in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, as well as other shocks constraining economic and social life, by buffering girls from the adverse effects of crises.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)Nearly 60 percent of Uganda's population is aged below twenty. This generation faces health and economic challenges associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), early pregnancy, and unemployment. Whether these challenges are due to a lack of information and or vocational skills is however uncertain. A programme was conducted to provide: (i) vocational training to run small-scale enterprises; and (ii) information on health and risky behaviors. The programme conducted, positively impacts behaviors on both economic and health margins. On economic margins, the intervention raises the likelihood that girls engage in income generating activities by 32 percent mainly driven by increased participation in self-employment. On health related margins, self-reported routine condom usage increases by 50 percent among the sexually active, and the probability of having a child decreases by 26 percent. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops from 21 percent to almost zero. The findings suggest combined interventions might be more effective among adolescent girls than single-pronged interventions aiming to improve labor market outcomes solely through vocational training, or to change risky behaviors solely through education programmes.Publication Women’s Empowerment in Action(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-12)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. The authors evaluate a multi-faceted policy intervention attempting to jumpstart adolescent women’s empowerment in Uganda, a context in which 60 percent 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. The authors find that four years post-intervention, adolescent girls in treated communities are 48 percent more likely to engage in income generating activities, an impact almost entirely driven by their greater engagement in self-employment. Teen pregnancy falls by 34 percent, and early entry into marriage/cohabitation falls by 62 percent. 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 multi-faceted program that provides skills transfers as a viable and cost-e¤ective policy intervention to improve the economic and social empowerment of adolescent girls over a four year horizon.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls in Uganda(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)The productive potential of adolescent girls in Uganda is critically limited by the reciprocal relationship between low health, education and employment indicators. With little incentive to attain relevant skills training, girls choose to have children early and become engaged in risky behavior, further hampering their ability to generate income. To address these challenges, we evaluated the impact of a BRAC program that simultaneously provided livelihoods training to run small-scale enterprises, and education on health and risky behaviors. After tracking 4,888 girls over a period of two years, the author found that the program had strong positive impacts on economic, health and agency outcomes for the girls. The program increased the likelihood of participants engaging in income-generating activities by 32 percent; self-reported routine condom use by those who were sexually active increased by 50 percent; fertility rates dropped by 26 percent; and there was a 76 percent reduction in adolescent girls reporting having had sex against their will during the past year.
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