Our analysis provides novel contributions to two established literatures: on household responses to aggregate shocks, and on women’s empowerment.

On household responses to shocks, a vast literature studies _ex ante_ and _ex post_ mechanisms to mitigate idiosyncratic risks [Townsend 1994]. A smaller literature examines responses to aggregate shocks, given greater identification challenges. Much of this has focused on financial crises [Fallon and Lucas 2002, McKenzie 2003], with a smaller literature studying shocks caused by epidemics or viral transmissions [Lee and McKibbin 2004, Adda 2016].<sup>6</sup> In the presence of aggregate shocks, coping strategies for dealing with idiosyncratic risk (such as temporary migration), often break down. Moreover, in aggregate crisis when the marginal utility of consumption is very high, households might be forced to engage in behaviors that do not maximize their long run welfare or permanent income, such as pulling children out of school [Jacoby and Skoufias 1997. Thomas _et al._ 2004, Ferreira and Schady 2009], or engaging in transactional sex [Dupas and Robinson 2012].<sup>7</sup> Our analysis also contributes to work on women’s empowerment. It has long been recognized that economic development and women’s empowerment are closely linked [Doepke _et al._ 2012, Duflo 2012, Jayachandran 2015], and that core dimensions of disadvantage stem from women having limited agency over their bodies, facing barriers to investing in their human capital, and having poor labor market prospects [Field and Ambrus 2008, Dupas 2011, Jensen 2012, Kleven and Landais 2017]. Most importantly, hard-earned gains in women’s empowerment can be quickly erased by aggregate economic shocks, and it is in times when households face the greatest crises, that gender differentials in outcomes are most likely to open up [Duflo 2012]. There is a long established literature from across disciplines discussing the issue using observational data [Goldin and Katz 2002, Doepke _et al._ 2012, Duflo 2012, Jayachandran 2015], and a nascent experimental literature evaluating interventions designed to empower women in periods of stability, not crisis [Ashraf _et al._ 2017, Buchmann _et al._ 2017, Bandiera _et al._ 2018, Dhar _et al._ 2018].<sup>8</sup>

> 6Existing work on the economics of Ebola has focused on monitoring impacts during the crisis through live trackers [Thomas _et al._ 2014, Glennerster _et al._ 2016], on the political economy of government responses [Maffioli 2017, Fluckiger _et al._ 2018], and on how formal sector firms were impacted [Bowles 2016, Casey _et al._ 2017].

7Fallon and Lucas [2002] review cross-country evidence from the 1990s financial crises in East Asia, and Mexico. The general pattern they find is that employment falls less than production, there is churning across sectors, large falls in real wages, reductions in school enrolment and the use of health facilities. In the context of the Mexican Peso crisis (a forced devaluation of the Peso in December 1994), McKenzie [2003] documents various household coping strategies, including changes in household structure (fertility), schooling, labor supply, and interhousehold transfers. All these channels can break down in the face of an aggregate shock.

> 8Ashraf _et al._ [2017] evaluate the effects of interventions targeting adolescent girls enrolled in primary schools in Zambia, providing them with negotiation-skills training and a safe-space to meet. The negotiation skills training led to long-run improvements in human capital outcomes of treated girls, but the safe space program had no effect. Neither intervention affected pregnancy rates. They do not report effects on girls’ labor market outcomes. Buchmann _et al._ [2017] evaluate an adolescent girls’ empowerment program in Bangladesh. The content of is quite similar to the ELA program (establishing clubs for girls and providing life skills via peer mentoring), but without any vocational training. They cross-randomized the intervention with incentives to delay marriage (an in-kind

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