Rwanda Youth Employment Activity Evaluation
Rwanda Youth Training. Credit: aphromutangana
Study Context
Comparing a costly program to a counterfactual of no program may not be an adequate way of assessing whether that was the best use of the money. Given the very large evidence base showing the effectiveness of cash transfers as well as their simplicity and low administrative cost, they form a natural ‘standard of care’ to which other programs can be compared. Led by Craig McIntosh and Andy Zeitlin, in partnership with USAID and GiveDirectly, this project rigorously evaluates the impact of unconditional cash transfers in Rwanda compared to a USAID-funded vocational training and employment program targeting vulnerable teenagers. This program is called Huguka Dukore (HD), implemented by Educational Development Center that gave 30 weeks of intensive training to underemployed youth with less than a secondary education.
Study Design
Researchers designed an individually randomized trial with treatment allocated through a public lottery comparing HD to cash, a control, and an arm that received both cash and training. The study design varies transfer amounts and looks at the combined effects of cash transfers and the workforce readiness program, allowing for particularly nuanced insights about the tradeoffs faced by policy-makers considering investments in these kinds of interventions.
Results and Policy Lessons
In September, 2020, midline results for the HD study were released showing significant improvements in work hours, productive assets, savings, and subjective well-being from the workforce readiness program, but significantly larger benefits across all outcomes from beneficiaries receiving cash transfers. In particular, smaller cash transfers of USD 400 proved particularly cost-effective.
In June 2022, the research team released the results of a 36-month follow-up and found that nearly half of the benefits of both the cash transfer and the employment training program had faded. Both interventions pushed participants away from agricultural wage labor and into non-agricultural wage labor. And though both interventions led participants to form new businesses, many of those businesses were closed by the final follow-up.
