# **7.5 Impacts on Education and Marriage Outcomes**

In Table 8 we examine outcomes related to education: whether the child is currently enrolled in school in columns 1 to 3 and hours spent in school or studying in the past week, conditional on enrollment (columns 4 to 6). While the _Choices_ program was not explicitly designed to keep adolescents in school we examine education outcomes since this is one of the major activities that the adolescent could be involved in. The program targeted adolescents both in and out of school and at baseline 80% of the adolescents were enrolled in school (83% of boys and 78% of girls). Table 8 shows that the _Choices_ treatment had limited impacts on school enrollment rates. The control group mean at midline for school enrollment was 83% and at endline 86%. Similarly, hours spent in school or studying remains unchanged by the program.

Adolescents also report on their aspirations for the future across a number of domains, including aspirations for professional work, education, marriage, and fertility. At baseline most of the aspirations were fairly high e.g. 76% of boys and 75% of girls aspire to study up to university at baseline. By the endline survey, 90% of the control group aspired to study up to university. However, even with such high aspirations in Table 8 we show there is a small impact of the _Choices_ program on girls’ aspirations to attend university.

Note, marital status and fertility outcomes were also examined at endline. However, at the time of the endline survey, a large part of the sample were still too young for these outcomes to be relevant. At endline we find less than 1% of the sample who are married and 0.5% of the sample have children with no estimated treatment difference.

# **7.6 Impacts on Leadership**

During the lab-in-the-field experimental games adolescents were asked to discuss and decide who within their team should be assigned to the position of leader and deputy of the team. In Table 9 we present the _Choices_ impacts on the likelihood an adolescent was chosen for a leadership position in their team where the outcome is a dummy variable for whether the adolescent was selected as a leader.<sup>74</sup> Columns 1 and 2 present the results for all teams combined.<sup>75</sup> While in column 1 the coefficient on _Choices_ treatment is positive, only in column 2 that examines heterogeneity by gender the result for _Choices_ boys is statistically significant. That is, column 2 shows that the _Choices_ treatment increases the likelihood that boys lead, and has no impact on the likelihood that girls lead. In columns 3 to 6 we split the sample into the mixed-gender teams (3-4) and single-gender teams (5-6). We find the _Choices_ impact for boys is only statistically significant for treated boys in the all boys team. Presumably, _Choices_ boys are better able to negotiate with other boys in their team that they should be made the leader. In the mixed-gender teams we find no evidence of a treatment impact; however, overall girls are less likely to lead their team than boys (see coefficient on _Girl_ is negative).

> 74Results for the position of deputy were also analyzed but are not shown in Table 9 as we find limited impacts for the deputy position.

> 75The regression analysis is first run for the unrestricted, full sample, then we restrict the analysis to mixed-gender teams only, and single-gender teams: the boys-only and girls-only teams.

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