Big Ideas
Aine Seitz McCarthy
  • Blog
  • About

Entrepreneurship training for marginalized youth

5/14/2014

0 Comments

 
It's true that researchers have bemoaned the seemingly excessive training of people in developing countries. So, why inflict more boring training on more barely-willing participants?

Because it seems that entrepreneurship training does work, for youth and for the most marginalized.  My co-authors and I explore the effects of a nine-month training program on youth in Tanzania, focusing on outcomes such as financial literacy and employment skills. Although there are plenty of labor market outcomes that may benefit from a program such as this, we explore the intermediary labor mechanisms that should affect long-term outcomes such as employment and income.

We presented our paper a couple of weeks ago at MidDev (Midwest International Economic Development Conference)
and got some great comments.  Here is our working draft.

The notion that entrepreneurship training may be the most effective for a more marginalized community (e.g. school drop-outs, women, youth, lower caste) is supported by McKenzie and Woodruff's (2005) comprehensive review of job training programs in developing countries.
Field et al (2010) and Blattman et al (a nice summary here) also both show that business ownership among marginalized women is higher after entrepreneurship training.

We find significant positive effects on participants' reported employment skills, savings knowledge and financial literacy through propensity score matching (PSM) analysis. Although PSM isn't the most ideal way to establish causality, we think we've established a valid effect through exploring a number of methodologies (various matching methods, cross-sectional linear regression and individual fixed effects).

Take a read and let us know if you think otherwise!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Aine Seitz McCarthy

    International development, economics and some pretty ambitious ideas from a stubborn graduate student clinging to her sense of adventure.


    Categories

    All
    Agriculture
    Amusements
    Books
    Camp
    Demography
    Economics
    Education
    Family Planning
    Fieldwork
    Futball
    Gender
    Grad School
    International Development
    News
    Public Policy
    Research
    Travel

    RSS Feed

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner


Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.