GIRLS' ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT - THE BEST CONTRACEPTIVE? A Randomized Controlled Trial in Tanzania

The project is led by the Chr. Michelsen Institute and Femina Hip (Tanzania), in collaboration with The Choice Lab at NHH - The Norwegian School of Economics, the Economic and Social Research Foundation (Tanzania), Development Pioneer Consultants (Tanzania). The main objective is to improve our understanding of young girls' fertility decisions in low-income contexts and how these decisions interact with their economic situation. Family planning policies implemented around the world have had very limited results. Recent evidence suggests that young women do not lack the proper information about reproductive health, and have enough control over their fertility. Early pregnancies and marriage would rather reflect a lack of better economic opportunities. To test this hypothesis, we sampled eighty secondary schools in rural Tanzania and surveyed all the girls in the last year of schooling. Femina Hip then developed course materials and trained the teachers to provide two types of intensive trainings: reproductive health training to provide information about sexuality and promote gender equality (information treatment), and business training focusing on good business strategies and self-employment promotion (opportunity treatment). At a later stage, the students of twenty randomly selected schools received the information treatment, another set of twenty randomly selected schools received the opportunity treatment, a third group of twenty randomly selected schools received both treatments. The last twenty schools did not get any training and serve as a control group. A few weeks after the training, and before they completed their schooling, we did a first short-term survey to detect changes in knowledge, attitudes and plans for the future among the different groups. One year later, once they had left school and had been on the job and marriage markets, we surveyed them again to detect differences in occupations, family and economic status. By comparing the treatments to the control group, we can see if the trainings have had any impacts on the girls? attitudes, and behavior in the reproductive health and economic domains. Comparing the information treatment with the opportunity treatment allows us to determine which is the crucial factor behind young women?s limited social and economic development. By comparing the third group, which received both trainings, to the groups that received only one, we can also check whether both interventions are needed, i.e. if the girls lacked both information and opportunities, or if one is enough. We find that the entrepreneurship and combined treatments have the largest and most significant impacts on most outcomes. Providing reproductive health information has very limited impact. We find the largest impacts on jobs and economic activities. In the short term, the opportunity treatment has a strong impact on the women's economic plans for the future: a large share of them is now planning their business activities. On the other hand, the information treatment has a larger effect on gender equality measures: the girls have a lower level of acceptance of wife beating and are more likely to value the women?s role in the family's economic activities. In the long run however, the effects of the information treatment vanish while the effects of the opportunity treatment are strengthened. The probability that a woman has her own income-generating activity one year after she finishes school almost doubles among those who received the opportunity treatment and those who received both treatments combined, compared to the control group. They also have larger activities, reflected in higher sales and investments. All treated groups also report larger values on happiness indices. The study therefore provides strong evidence that young women lack strong economic opportunities rather than additional reproductive health information.

The main objective of the present study: Girls' economic empowerment, the best contraceptive?, is to increase our understanding of young girls? fertility decisions and how these decisions interact with their economic situation. The present study will take place in Tanzania where the majority of girls start childbearing at the age of 16 to 20 years, and will investigate the fertility decisions of girls when they are on the verge of making two of the most important decisions in their lives: What to do when leaving school and whether to start childbearing. Using a randomized controlled trial methodology; we will offer two different treatments to a randomly selected sample of girls; an information treatment and an opportunity treatment. The information treat ment will offer practical and empowering information about reproductive health, such as information about contraception and the consequences of risky sexual behavior, and information about gender equality, and women?s empowerment. The opportunity treatmen t will aim at expanding the economic opportunities of girls, by providing them with knowledge on how to run their own business. By comparing the two treatments, we can shed light on what is more effective in changing the fertility and economic aspirations of young girls: providing information or changing their economic opportunities? An ultimate goal of this research project is to inform the design of sound policies, and thus we will be particularly careful to develop a cost-effective intervention with scaling-up potential: all treatments will be evaluated and compared not only in terms of impact but also on their relative economic costs. The interventions are based on current practices of our partners, which make it easier to scale up successful parts of the project.