The Evidence Is In: How Should Youth Employment Programs In Low-Income Countries Be Designed?

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The Impact of Gender Inequality on Economic Performance in Developing Countries

“…Instead, it is likely that such a boost of female workers would lower earnings, lead to some drop-out of men (and women) so that the aggregate effects are likely to be substantially smaller. Of course, displacement and other general equilibrium effects can also be a problem for micro studies where, for example, an intervention to boost female employment might simply displace non-participating women or men or would lead to much smaller effects if implemented at scale due to saturation or other general equilibrium effects (Fox and Kaul, 2017). Interpreting results from cross-country regressions can also suffer from this problem if they only consider the coefficient on female education or employment when making projections.…”

Deterring Emigration with Foreign Aid: An Overview of Evidence from Low‐Income Countries

“…). In no case, however, has active labor market policy been shown capable of large reductions in youth unemployment at scale (Fox and Kaul ).…”

“…There are exceptional cases where intensive job training through the best training centers has been found to substantially reduce youth unemployment (e.g., Alfonsi et al 2017). In no case, however, has active labor market policy been shown capable of large reductions in youth unemployment at scale (Fox and Kaul 2017).…”

Gender, Rural Youth and Structural Transformation: Evidence to Inform Innovative Youth Programming

“…Comprehensive reviews of impact evaluations of youth employment programmes (Fox and Kaul, 2018) and programmes addressing the economic empowerment of adolescent girls (Baird and Özler, 2016) have recently been completed. Thus, we do not undertake a new review for this paper.…”

“…Most of the studies on vocational and skills training reviewed by Fox and Kaul (2018) are based on impact evaluations in urban or peri-urban areas and are not consistent in terms of the direction of their gendered impacts. Because they are urban studies, the findings may not be completely relevant to rural youth.…”