|**Finance**|**Cash grants**of about US$200 speeded up self‐employment in Kenya (young females), and**grants**<br>**($300) plus limited training**had positive results in Ethiopia.<br>Evaluations of**microcredit**in six countries (Bosnia, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Morocco, and<br>Mongolia) showed positive effects on start‐ups.|
|---|---|

_Note:_ For details and references on programs evaluated, see Appendix A.

Training is also a popular intervention to speed entry into this employment segment and often is combined with some work experience. As with wage employment, the TVT results are mixed. In Nepal, private training contractors helped participants enter self‐employment, and they also helped participants already engaged in business work more hours or develop a better business. In post‐ conflict Uganda, groups of youth selected by their village were provided cash grants to get apprenticeship‐type training and working capital to start their business. The Uganda program succeeded in increasing both non‐farm employment and earnings relative to the control group, perhaps because it included financing for the startup. In Kenya, vouchers that youth could use for public and private trainers also showed no effect on earnings or self‐employment; in India providing subsidies for young women to attend TVT had only a very slight positive effect on employment (including self‐employment). In Malawi, a program which paid master‐craftspersons to train poor youth showed no short‐term effect on employment; no medium‐term survey was conducted.

Results for business skills training are also mixed. De Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff (2013), in a survey of business training programs, found little or no effect of business training on earnings of existing HEs and microenterprises.<sup>18</sup> For startups, very simple business skills training may be effective, however, especially when combined with some grant financing or savings support (through a savings group or microfinance mechanism). Successful examples include WINGS in Northern Uganda, a program in Nicaragua that added one day of business plan training and a cash grant to an existing conditional cash transfer program, and the AGI program in Liberia, which combined business skills with mentorship and a cash grant put into a bank account opened on behalf of the participant. Upper‐class youth (such as those enrolled in secondary school in Uganda or in university in Tunisia) do not seem to need financial support along with business skills training; presumably they can get the startup capital from their families. A microfranchising intervention in Nairobi provided business skills training, limited technical training in operating the franchise (a cart selling food, for example), as well as startup capital in kind (the cart, apron, and sign, for example), but it did no better than a cash grant in improving employment and earnings for young women. In general, short, very basic business skills training seems to be as effective as longer programs (in Nicaragua, the training was only one day, to explain how to draw up a simple business plan). Notably, successful programs for young women tend to supplement the business skills training with mentorship and/or life skills.

Qualitative and non‐experimental quantitative research has identified a number of other constraints in the business environment faced by youth and others in starting or sustaining HEs (Filmer and Fox, 2014). These include access to work and sales space, such as protected access to areas of high foot traffic; infrastructure, such as electricity, water, and waste disposal; protection from crime or predatory behavior by police or other officials; and access to markets, including integration into productive value chains. Experimental evidence on interventions to address these problems has not yet surfaced, although evaluations of some market access programs are underway.

Finally, displacement can also occur with programs that help youth to enter self‐employment. While the programs may result in more hours of work and higher earnings for the youth, they may result in

> 18 McKenzie and Puerto (2017) found that business skills had an effect on profits for women HE owners, but only in a longer‐ term evaluation (after three years). This reason for the delayed effect was that trainees needed time to save money and/or get more capital to implement business improvements.

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