The Adolescent Girls’ Initiative : Economic Empowerment and Reproductive Health

1. The Adolescent Girls’ Initiative:Economic Empowerment and Reproductive Health Mattias Lundberg 1 December 2009

2. What is the AGI? • A program of pilot projects in five low-income and fragile countries: Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, Nepal, and Afghanistan, to promote the transition of adolescent girls from school to productive employment. • The initiative is being implemented over the next three years, and each project has an integral impact evaluation.

3. What is the AGI? • Primarily training in skills for wage employment, business development skills, and life skills. • Also placement assistance and links to microfinance • Afghanistan: to provide job skills training to adolescent girls and young women in Balkh Province, leading to greater access to wage employment. • Liberia: to promote entry into wage- and self-employment for approximately 2500 girls in Monrovia and adjacent Margibi county, through the provision of business development skills, job skills and life skills.

4. What is the AGI? • Nepal: to promote access to employment and increased incomes for about 3500 young women by modifying the Employment Fund, an existing skills training and placement program. • Rwanda: to improve employment and increase incomes for disadvantaged adolescent girls and young women in two urban and two rural districts in Rwanda • South Sudan: to improve employment and increase incomes of adolescent girls and young women through demand-driven training and linkages to market opportunities.

5. Why do we care about young women’s transition to work? • We’ve largely achieved parity in primary and secondary education. • The same progress has not been seen in the school-to-work transition. • Returns to education and training higher among young women than young men.  more targeted post-school training. • Returns to capital are lower among women.  less credit targeted to women? • More empowered women invest more and earn higher profits.

6. What’s the link to health? • Women’s economic empowerment enhances the household’s ability to smooth consumption over time. • It leads to significantly better child development outcomes: • lower infant and child mortality; • greater attained height and health in adulthood; • greater educational attainment. • Economically active women have higher opportunity costs of time, including marriage and child bearing. • They marry later, give birth later in life and have fewer children on average compared to non-active women.

7. What’s the link to health? • Poverty may lead young women to engage in transactional sex. But it’s not usually the main factor leading young women to exchange sex for money or gifts. • There is no robust consistent correlation between being in school and transactional sex. • The relationship between income and transactional sex is not consistent across countries. • One recent study found a negative relationship in Burkina Faso and Togo, and a positive relationship in Mali and Nigeria.

8. What are we doing in the AGI? • The AGI is testing the following hypotheses: • Business development and skills training, jobs placement assistance, and life skills training will enhance economic outcomes. • They will also enhance non-economic outcomes, directly and indirectly through economic empowerment. • How do we measure this? • Baseline and follow-up quantitative surveys of beneficiaries and control group. • Conventional economic outcomes (income and employment) • Conventional health outcomes (illness, pregnancy)

9. What are we doing in the AGI? • Other outcomes: • Hopes and aspirations • Financial capability • Attitudes towards risk and time • Self-control and self-regulation • Self-efficacy and self-confidence • Relationships and networks • Experience of violence • Psychological games among participants to examine group dynamics, leadership, and trust.

10. What are we doing in the AGI? • Timeline: • Afghanistan – in discussions • Liberia – baseline January • Nepal – contracting survey firm • Rwanda – project design • Sudan – baseline Jan / Feb • Follow-up surveys, analysis, report by end 2011.