The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola : Lessons from an Empowerment Program / Bandiera, Oriana.

Format:

Book

Government document

Author/Creator:

Bandiera, Oriana.

Contributor:

Bandiera, Oriana.

Buehren, Niklas.

Goldstein, Markus P.

Rasul, Imran.

Smurra, Andrea.

Series:

Policy research working papers.

World Bank e-Library.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Age of Marriage.

Communicable Diseases.

Disease Control.

Ebola.

Education.

Educational Sciences.

Empowerment.

Gender Innovation Lab.

Health Care Services Industry.

Health, Nutrition and Population.

Industry.

Infectious Disease.

Public Health Promotion.

Young Women.

Local Subjects:

Age of Marriage.

Communicable Diseases.

Disease Control.

Ebola.

Education.

Educational Sciences.

Empowerment.

Gender Innovation Lab.

Health Care Services Industry.

Health, Nutrition and Population.

Industry.

Infectious Disease.

Public Health Promotion.

Young Women.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (80 pages)

Other Title:

Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : The World Bank, 2019.

System Details:

data file

Summary:

This paper evaluates an intervention to raise young women's economic empowerment in Sierra Leone, where women frequently experience sexual violence and face multiple economic disadvantages. The intervention provides them with a protective space (a club) where they can find support, receive information on health and reproductive issues, and vocational training. Unexpectedly, the post-baseline period coincided with the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The analysis leverages quasi-random across-village variation in the severity of Ebola-related disruption, and random assignment of villages to the intervention to document the impact of the Ebola outbreak on the economic lives of 4,700 women tracked over the crisis, and any ameliorating role played by the intervention. In highly disrupted control villages, the crisis leads younger girls to spend significantly more time with men, out-of-wedlock pregnancies rise, and as a result, they experience a persistent 16 percentage points drop in school enrolment post-crisis. These adverse effects are almost entirely reversed in treated villages because the intervention enables young girls to allocate time away from men, preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and enabling them to re-enrol in school post-crisis. In treated villages, the unavailability of young women leads some older girls to use transactional sex as a coping strategy. The intervention causes them to increase contraceptive use so this does not translate into higher fertility. The analysis pinpoints the mechanisms through which the severity of the aggregate shock impacts the economic lives of young women and shows how interventions in times of crisis can interlink outcomes across younger and older cohorts.