Projet Emploi Jeune Impact Evaluation 2017, Baseline Survey (Benin)

Abstract

The study consists in a multi-arm randomized control trial of Benin's national Youth Employment Project. It tests the impact of a comprehensive youth employment program providing a cash grant, a socioemotional skills training and a business skills training to unemployed and underemployed youth, and compare relative impacts of the full package, a cash grant arm only, and a training arm only. The study provides much needed evidence on the effectiveness of comprehensive youth employment programs, an increasingly common policy response to a high strategic priority for many governments, and assesses the relative importance of skills and capital constraints to labor market outcomes of the target population. The success of the program is measured against improvements in four main outcome variables: vulnerable employment, earnings, business profits, and number of employees in the business owned. Three secondary outcomes are also considered: agency, wealth, and expenditures. The sample size and measurement tools were determined to allow a thorough analysis of gender-differentiated impacts and other important dimensions of heterogeneity such as cognitive and non-cognitive skills.