Girls Empowered by Microfranchising: Estimating the Impacts of Microfranchising on Young Women in Nairobi
This study compares a multifaceted entrepreneurship promotion programme and an unconditional cash grant
Abstract
The authors directly compare two promising approaches to increasing sustainable entrepreneurship among young women: a multifaceted entrepreneurship promotion program and a comparably valued unconditional cash grant. Both interventions increased entrepreneurship in the long-term and increased income in the medium-term, but impacts on income do not persist in the long-term. The higher cost of the multifaceted program arm and the similarity of impacts across the two treatments indicates that the cash grants are a more cost effective way of increasing entrepreneurship in this context. The lack of sustained impacts on income suggests that self-employment may not be the solution to high youth underemployment.
The Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries Programme is a joint collaboration between the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Citation
Brudevold-Newman, Andrew, Maddalena Honorati, Pamela Jakiela, and Owen Ozier (2017) “Girls Empowered by Micro franchising: Estimating the Impacts of Micro franchising on Young Women in Nairobi,” GLM LIC Policy Brief No. 12.