assignment process was conducted to assign the trainees to the first or second round of training.<sup>9</sup> Of those entered into the random selection, 1273 young women were assigned to the first round of training, with the remaining 808 to serve as a control group (the control group would participate in the second round of training starting in July 2011). Of the 1273 assigned to treatment, 118 women were not found or chose not to participate after they were selected.<sup>10</sup> In order to fill at least some of these slots, 39 young women from the control group were randomly issued as replacements, resulting in a modified control group of 769 individuals. In the end, 1191 young women entered the first round of training.<sup>11</sup> The assignment process and all post-randomization modifications are summarized in Figure 2.

Table 1 reports the baseline and midline survey response rates leading to the sample used for the analysis in this paper. The target sample for both the baseline and midline survey consisted of the original 2106 EPAG recruits, of which 1989 were successfully interviewed during the baseline survey.<sup>12</sup> At midline, 1736 were interviewed, including 56 who were not interviewed at baseline. For our analysis, we drop individuals who were excluded from the randomization or who were manually re-assigned from control to treatment as replacements after the randomization. We also drop individuals for whom we lack household information at baseline,<sup>13</sup> resulting in a final panel of 1601 individuals. In section 6 on “Robustness Checks” we investigate the potential biases introduced by sample attrition.

# 3.3. Identification

Our identification strategy relies on a straightforward difference-in-difference OLS model, owing to the randomized nature of selection into the program. The analysis will focus on estimating the intention-totreat (ITT) estimate, which considers all participants initially assigned to the first round of training as part of the “treatment” group, regardless of whether they actually joined or completed the classroom training phase of the program. In the results section we will show that these ITT estimates are identical to the average outcomes among those who actually completed the program (the “ATT” estimates).<sup>14</sup> The main regression model is specified in equation (1) below.

Yit= β1(Postt x Treati) + β2Postt + β3 Treati + β4 Xi0 + εit (1)

> 9 Of the 2106, twenty-five were pregnant and late into their pregnancies, so they were assigned to Round 2 directly and not entered into the lottery at all. These 25 were included in the surveys but have been dropped from the analysis because they were not assigned randomly.

10 The reasons given for not entering the training included: 1) they were back in school, 2) they had moved to a distant location, 3) they were seriously ill, 4) they had found full-time work, 5) they were not interested or able to make such a big time commitment, or 6) they could not be located despite numerous efforts.

11 This includes 1155 of the original 1273 assigned to treatment, plus 36 out of the 39 "replacements"- young women from the control group who were offered a chance to be reassigned to round 1.

12 Note that a previously released baseline report for this evaluation was based on 2008 observations. However, after cleaning, 4 were found to be duplicate observations and 15 were not found in the program data and hence were dropped from the midline analysis. This leaves 1989 baseline observations that are included in the midline analysis.

13 These are cases in which the adolescent girl was interviewed but the household head interview was not conducted because the head was not available, could not be found, or declined to take part.

14 This suggests that the loss of the 118 young women who were selected but declined to take part, and the 60 who started but did not complete the program, does not bias the results.

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