Panel A shows our respondents are on average 18 years old, and 60% are in a relationship. While girls’ age at marriage is close to 16, the average age at marriage of their husbands is almost double, at 31. Despite their young ages and the newly formed marriages, nearly half have children. For those in relationships, 46% report being subject to some form of intimate partner violence. These traits of early marriage, childbearing and exposure to violence all have long term consequences on the ability to acquire human capital and lead financially independent lives.<sup>26</sup> Panel B shows other empowerment measures at baseline. We first construct an index of gender empowerment based on questions eliciting views on roles of men and women related to work and engagement in household chores. Higher values represent more egalitarian gender norms. On this index, adolescent girls themselves score very low with an average score of just 17, suggesting ingrained unequal gender attitudes pre-intervention. 75% are sexually active, with their age at debut being 15. The minority of sexually active girls report using contraception, and they report spending around 5hrs/wk with men (that they are engaged in sexual relations with). As a benchmark, they spend around 28hrs/wk in all learning activities (that can include schools, church-based school, or vocational training outside of ELA clubs). 10% report having experienced unwanted sex in the past year, and 4% have engaged in transactional sex.

Panel C highlights the low levels of human capital pre-crisis: only 23% of young women are literate (based on an assessment combining basic reading ability, reading comprehension and writing sentences); their knowledge of pregnancy causes is limited (the average score on a related test is 64 _/_ 100), and the same applies to their knowledge related to HIV. This maps back to the low levels of contraceptive use and frequency of teenage pregnancy and childbearing.

The economic activities of young women that foster human capital are best described using a four-way type distribution: around 27% of young girls in control villages are in school; 34% are exclusively engaged in income generating activities; 18% are engaged in both schooling and income generation, while 20% report being engaged in neither activity, hence spending their time engaged in household chores or as caregivers.<sup>27</sup> Figure 4A shows how these activities vary by age at baseline. The majority of girls aged 12-14 are in school at baseline, pre-Ebola. There are no sharp discontinuities in enrolment rates at key cut-off stages of the school system (ages 15 and 18) but rather gradual declines in age. Presumably this smoothing is partly due to grade retention. There is a steady increase in specialization in 26We can compare the characteristics of our sample to those surveyed in the 2013 DHS data, in the same age range and resident in the same districts (although covering urban areas too). We find the samples have similar characteristics in terms of likelihood to be married, having children, being sexually active, age of sexual debut and the frequency of unwanted sex.

> 27The kinds of income generating activity conducted at baseline are all forms of self-employment, in line with the results in Casey _et al._ [2016]. The most frequent activities are small trade/business (40%), food processing (20%) and household land cultivation (15%).

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