What’s the Best Way to Support Youth Skills?
By: The Center For Effective Global Action
Tags: Employment, Youth Mentorship, Youth, Labor, Skills Development

This World Youth Skills Day, CEGA Communications Intern Yevanit Reschechtko (MDP ’22, UC Berkeley) explores CEGA’s recent research projects that support youth skills and promote economic stability.

Youth participate in an employment skill-building workshop in Rwanda. Credit: aphromutangana

July 15 is recognized by the United Nations as World Youth Skills Day, a day to highlight the importance of equipping young people with the skills they need for employment and economic stability. Despite progress toward improving youth employment and skill-building in recent years, young people still face significant barriers to accessing gainful employment.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 22% of youth (aged 15–24) globally were not in school, employment, or training, with the rate as high as one in three for young women. Meanwhile, as a result of COVID-related lockdowns and economic recessions, the global youth employment rate dropped by 8.7% in 2020.

Over a year and a half after the pandemic began, helping young people achieve economic stability is more urgent than ever. To address this challenge, CEGA supports several studies generating new evidence on how to promote youth skills development and economic stability in low- and middle-income countries. Our investment in this research aims to provide policymakers, NGOs, and government leaders with the evidence they need to identify the most effective economic, programmatic, and psychosocial interventions to support youth all over the world.

Below is a selection of related studies we’re working on:

Finding a Cost-Effective Approach: “Cash benchmarking” a Youth Unemployment Program

One way to assess the cost-effectiveness of a program is through “cash benchmarking,” which compares the impacts of an intervention to unconditional cash transfers of equal value. An ongoing study — funded by USAID through CEGA’s Development Impact Lab, and in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) — is using this approach to assess a youth employment program in Rwanda.

CEGA affiliated professor Craig McIntosh (UCSD) and Andrew Zeitlin (Georgetown University) compared the impacts of a USAID youth employment program in Rwanda to unconditional cash transfers implemented by GiveDirectly. They found that although participants in the employment program did gain business knowledge and productive hours, overall employment rates did not improve fifteen months after the program ended. On the other hand, recipients of a $332 cash transfer saw longer-term economic and psychological improvements, suggesting that providing young people with the cash they need to overcome initial economic barriers to employment may be a cost-effective strategy. See this interview with the investigators for more details.

Addressing the Youth Employment Gender Gap in Uganda and Tanzania

Young women face especially high barriers to employment in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Only 36% complete secondary school (compared with 42% of boys) and they are more likely to drop out due to low investments in human capital, high rates of unintended pregnancy, and mental health disorders. Two studies funded through the BRAC-CEGA Learning Collaborative address this gender gap by providing new evidence on psychosocial interventions that build relevant skills and improve young women’s employment outcomes.

In partnership with Strong Minds Uganda, Sarah Baird (George Washington University), Berk Ozler (World Bank), Chiara Dell’Aira (World Bank), and Danish Us Salam (BRAC Uganda) are evaluating whether a low-cost and scalable psychotherapeutic health intervention, coupled with an unconditional cash transfer, impacts mental health and other outcomes of wellbeing for adolescent girls participating in BRAC Uganda’s Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) clubs.

Preliminary findings suggest small immediate improvements in mental health outcomes at the end of therapy, as well as decreases in depression symptoms for participants who didn’t receive the therapy or cash, but did participate in ELA clubs. There were no significant short-term effects on school enrollment, incidence of pregnancy and child marriage, or condom use. Forthcoming two-year follow-up results will provide more information about the intervention’s impact on mental health and human capital outcomes, particularly in relation to COVID-19.

CEGA affiliated professor Ketki Sheth (UC Merced) and James Khakshi (BRAC International) are assessing the impact of BRAC’s Education, Empowerment, and Life-skills for Adolescent Girls and Young Children (EELAY) program in Tanzania. EELAY is a two year alternative education program that targets girls who have dropped out or been excluded from the educational system. Preliminary results — shared at CEGA’s 2021 Africa Evidence Summit — suggest that EELAY is successful in increasing girls’ participation in the qualifying examination for secondary school equivalency. The follow-up evaluation will assess the program’s impact on labor market, welfare, and education outcomes, with the intention of scaling actionable findings across BRAC programming in East Africa.

Identifying Effective Skills-Building Interventions in Uganda

While many sub-Saharan national governments have integrated entrepreneurship training and career coaching into high school curricula, these programs are primarily based on hard skills (i.e. accounting, finance, and strategy) rather than soft skills (i.e. communication, negotiation, and decision-making). Two CEGA-funded studies in Uganda examine the effects of career coaching, mentorship, and experiential learning on soft skills such as self-efficacy, persuasion, and career aspirations, as well as on youth employment outcomes.

With support from CEGA’s Behavioral Economics in Reproductive Health Initiative (BERI), CEGA affiliated professor Paul Gertler (UC Berkeley), Laura Chioda (UC Berkeley), David Contreras-Loya (UC Berkeley), and Dana Carney (UC Berkeley) partnered with Educate! to compare the effects of two employment interventions — one focused on soft skills and the other on hard skills — on Ugandan secondary school students. Three and a half years after the intervention, they found that earnings increased significantly for youth in both groups, as did their likelihood to engage in entrepreneurship and maintain successful enterprises. The cost of the program was eclipsed by two months of participants’ employment earnings alone, suggesting the cost-effectiveness of both hard- and soft-skill approaches. See this blog post for more details.

CEGA affiliated professor Jeremy Magruder (UC Berkeley), Mary Namubiru (BRAC Uganda), Mahbubul Kabi and Livia Alfonsi (UC Berkeley) are examining how career coaching and job search assistance from mentors — such as successful alumna — can influence career expectations and labor market trajectories for students attending five Vocational Institutes (VTIs) in Uganda. The study, also funded through the BRAC-CEGA Learning Collaborative, will build evidence as to how mentorship from relatable role models can support youth’s soft skills by complementing more concrete interventions like job search assistance.