The Impact of an Adolescent Girls Employment Program: The EPAG Project in Liberia
Open accessAbstract
This paper presents findings from the impact evaluation of the Economic Empowerment of Adolescent Girls and Young Women (EPAG) project in Liberia. The EPAG project was launched by the Liberian Ministry of Gender and Development in 2009 with the goal of increasing the employment and income of 2,500 young Liberian women by providing livelihood and life skills training and facilitating their transition to productive work. The analysis in this paper is based on data collected during two rounds of quantitative surveys in 2010 and 2011, the second of which was conducted six months after the classroom-based phase of the training program ended. Strong impacts are found on the employment and earnings outcomes of program participants, relative to a control group of non-participants. The EPAG program increased employment by 47 percent and earnings by 80 percent. In addition, the impact evaluation documents positive effects on a variety of empowerment measures, including access to money, self-confidence, and anxiety about circumstances and the future. The evaluation finds no net impact on fertility or sexual behavior. At the household level, there is evidence of improved food security and shifting attitudes toward gender norms. These results reinforce the highly positive feedback received from focus group discussions with program participants. Finally, preliminary cost-benefit analysis indicates that the budgetary cost of the EPAG business development training for young women is equivalent to the value of three years of the increase in income among program beneficiaries. These preliminary results provide strong evidence for further investment and research into young women's livelihood programs in Liberia.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Adoho et al. [2014] find that adolescent girls in treated communities in Liberia increased employment by 47% and earnings by 80% relative to girls in control communities.
“Adoho et al. [2014] evaluate a program somewhat similar to ELA in Liberia: their independent replication of the short run (6-month) impacts …nd that adolescent girls in treated communities increased employment by 47 %and earnings by 80 %relative to girls in control communities.”
From Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa (2020) · cites this paper as Adoho et al. [2014]
Economic Activities (pp. 15–16) reports a 47% increase in employment and an 80% increase in income relative to the control group. But Sample and Attrition (p. 9) says young women recruited in the target communities were individually assigned to treatment or control; the paper does not compare treated communities with control communities. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAdoho et al. [2014] found no net impact on fertility or sexual behavior.
“The evaluation found no net impact on fertility or sexual behavior, suggesting those channels might take longer to work through.”
From Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa (2020) · cites this paper as Adoho et al. [2014]
Adoho et al. [2014] document positive effects on a variety of empowerment measures, including access to money, self-confidence, and anxiety about circumstances and the future.
“Their impact evaluation documents positive e¤ects on a variety of empowerment measures, including access to money, self-con…dence, and anxiety about circumstances and the future.”
From Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa (2020) · cites this paper as Adoho et al. [2014]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2001) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.91.2.67 · Cited by 1,391 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 12
- [1]Ai, Chunrong, and Edward C. Norton (2003). Interaction terms in logit and probit models. Economics Letters 80, p. 123-129.
- [2]Ashenfelter, Orley (1978). Estimating the effect of training programs on earnings, Review of Economics and Statistics , vol. 60, pp. 47-57.
- [3]Ashraf, Nava, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin (2010). Female empowerment: Impact of a commitment savings product in the Philippines. World development , 38 (3), 333-344.
- [9]Betcherman, Gordon, Martin Godfrey, Susana Puerto, Friederike Rother, and Antoneta Stavreska (2007). A Review of Intervention to Support Young Workers: Findings of the Youth Employment Inventory. World Bank Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 0715.
- [12]Borghans, Lex., Angela L. Duckworth, James J. Heckman, and Bas Ter Weel (2008). The economics and psychology of personality traits. Journal of Human Resources, 43(4), 972-1059.
- [15]Dunbar, Megan S., M. Catherine Maternowska , Mi-Suk J. Kang , Susan M. Laver , Imelda Mudekunye-Mahaka and Nancy S. Padian (2010). Findings from SHAZ!: A Feasibility Study of a Microcredit and Life-Skills HIV Prevention Intervention to Reduce Risk Among Adolescent Female Orphans in Zimbabwe. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community , 38:2, 147-161.
- [19]Hoddinott, John, and Lawrence Haddad (1995). Does Female Income Share Influence Household Expenditures? Evidence from Cote d'Ivoire. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics , 57, 1.
- [21]Ibarrarán, Pablo and David Rosas (2009). Evaluating the Impact of Job Training Programs in Latin America: Evidence from IDB funded operation. Journal of Development Effectiveness .
- [27]Mollanen, Kristin L. (2006). The Adolescent Self-Regulation Inventory: The Development and Validation of a Questionnaire of Short-term and Long-term Self-Regulation. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36:835-848.
- [29]Pitt, Mark M. and Shahidur R. Khandker (1998). The Impact of Group-based Credit on Poor Households in Bangladesh: Does the Gender of Participants Matter? Journal of Political Economy , vol. 106, no. 5.
- [30]Ssewamala, F. M., Ismayilova, L., McKay, M., Sperber, E., Bannon, W., & Alicea, S. (2010). Gender and the effects of an economic empowerment program on attitudes toward sexual risk-taking among AIDS-orphaned adolescent youth in Uganda. Journal of Adolescent Health , 46(4), 372-378.
- [31]Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data, MIT Press: Cambridge MA. 2002.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa
Bandiera, O., Buehren, N., Burgess, R., Goldstein, M., Gulesci, S., Rasul, I., & Sulaiman, M. (2020) · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics · doi:10.1257/app.20170416 · Cited by 311 · see citing works
Kluve, J., Puerto, S., Robalino, D., Romero, J. M., Rother, F., Stöterau, J., Weidenkaff, F., & Witte, M. (2017) · Campbell Systematic Reviews: Better Evidence for a Better World · doi:10.4073/csr.2017.12 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Providing Out-of-School Girls with Skills: A Review of the Global Evidence
Khan, A., & Mupuwaliywa, M. (2015) · doi:10.1596/23868 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Adoho, F., Chakravarty, S., Korkoyah, D. T., Jr., Lundberg, M., & Tasneem, A.
- Affiliations
- World Bank (US)
- Venue
- World Bank, Washington, DC eBooks
- Publisher
- World Bank, Washington, DC
- Published
- 2014-04
- OpenAlex
- W1771670897
- Cited by
- 99
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 4 · 2012: 4
- Type
- report
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- World Bank, Washington, DC eBooks (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (World Bank) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Education and Labor Relations
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Microfinance and Financial Inclusion
- Keywords
- livelihood training, life skills training, youth employment, earnings outcomes, gender norms, food security, fertility, sexual behavior, cost-benefit analysis, Liberia
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
