Data on remittances received from migrants (whether men or women, and if they had migrated for work) is also useful in understanding changes in rural men’s and women’s opportunities and income from ruralurban migration. Among the LSMS-ISA, the 2016-17 Malawi survey is the only one that asks about money sent back to the household from children aged 15 and older who have migrated (including the amount, frequency, mode of payment, and recipient within the household). Extending these questions to include parents who have migrated, across different country surveys going forward, would also be helpful.

# _Skills development_

Despite the narrowing of rural gender gaps in school enrollment over time, rural women face substantial inequalities in skills development and the ability to seek improved economic opportunities. Broad questions remain on (a) understanding how to target interventions to narrow these gaps and (b) how skills and economic mobility translate into better employment outcomes. Several randomized controlled trial (RCT) program-level studies have introduced formal business training for women entrepreneurs but often with little effect, due perhaps to skills not improving enough or the right skills not being taught (see McKenzie and Woodruff, 2014).<sup>6</sup> Underreporting of rural women’s employment also makes targeting training programs and extension services difficult. At present, most nationally-representative household surveys typically do not ask skills-related questions beyond literacy and having formal schooling, which as seen in Van den Broeck and Kilic (2018) may not be relevant for designing policy in contexts where only low-skilled opportunities are available. The World Bank’s STEP skills measurement program has implemented household and employer-based surveys between 2012 and 2017 in 17 countries, spanning a range of cognitive and non-cognitive skills through objective and self-reported measures, but only covers urban adults aged 15-64.<sup>7</sup> To inform areas that surveys should cover on collecting data on different types of skills, and in turn how to evaluate outcomes from different types of employment-related programs, guidelines were developed during the 20<sup>th</sup> ICLS on the measurement of qualifications and skills mismatch — where skills span (a) jobspecific/technical skills, (b) basic skills such as literacy, numeracy and ICT skills, and (c) skills that can be transferred from one job to another, including cognitive as well as non-cognitive skills such as personal initiative and managerial acumen) (ILO, 2018e). In low-income, wage labor contexts, relevant job-specific and basic skills would typically be focused on physical/labor-intensive capacities, but would range more widely for those running their own business/farm operations where numeracy-related skills (including financial acumen, for example) are relevant. Better data on non-cognitive factors associated with employment are also highly relevant in low-income, rural contexts, where gender norms on employment opportunities tend to be highly entrenched — approaches used in psychology have also been introduced in the WEAI survey module to understand the extent to which respondents’ economic actions are driven by self-motivation as opposed to others’ preferences (Malapit et al, 2017). Similarly, the importance of personal initiative (as opposed to acting out of necessity) for women entrepreneurs has been raised by Campos et al (2017) and Buvinic and Furst-Nichols (2014).

> 6 Few studies are focused in rural areas, however (see Calderon et al, 2013 for one exception from rural Mexico).

> 7 See http://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/step/about for more details.

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