G²LM|LIC - Nairobi Women’s Labor Market Panel Data

The project conducted a randomized evaluation of two labor market interventions between 2013 and 2017 targeted to 905 young women aged 18 to 19 in three of Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods, Baba Dogo, Dandora, and Lunga-Lunga. Applicants to the program were stratified by neighborhood and application date and then randomly assigned to one of three treatment arms: a franchise treatment, a cash grant treatment, and a control group. This design allows to estimate the impact of the franchise and grant treatments on those invited to the program, and to compare the impacts of the cash grant treatment — which relaxes the credit constraint but provides no other training or support — to a multifaceted program designed to address many of the obstacles to youth entrepreneurship simultaneously.

Franchise Treatment: The first intervention, the Girls Empowered by Micro-franchise (GEM) program, was designed and implemented by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The GEM program helped out-of-school teens launch branded franchise businesses to two well-known Kenyan brands – either salons featuring “Darling” brand hair products or mobile food carts selling “Kenchic” chicken – through a package business and life skills training, franchise-specific training, start-up capital (in the form of the specific physical capital/ business inputs required to start the franchise), and ongoing business mentoring.

Cash Grant Treatment: The second intervention was implemented by the research team and consisted of an unconditional cash grant disbursed to randomly selected applicants to the GEM program. The cash grant program, implemented by IPA, provided unconditional cash grants of 20,000 Kenyan shillings (approximately 230 US dollars in 2013). The program included an initial meeting, where women assigned to the cash arm learned about the program, and a follow-up meeting within one week where the grant was distributed with no training or other support. Women were not encouraged to use their grant in any particular way.

The project draws on three main sources of data. First, a brief baseline survey to all eligible applicants prior to randomization was administered. Also a midline survey 7 to 10 months after the end of the intervention was conducted. The midline surveys were conducted via phone. The midline included detailed questions about income-generating activities, but did not ask about a broader range of outcomes (this was not feasible in a short phone interview).

Also an extremely brief phone survey 2 to 5 months after the intervention was conducted, but did not ask about income-generating activities at that time. The goal of that survey was to collect better contact information than had been gathered at baseline (not in the data). A more comprehensive endline survey was conducted 14–22 months after the end of the intervention. Attrition rates are extremely low in both the midline and the endline surveys: 94.0 percent of the baseline sample at midline and 92.5 percent of the baseline sample at endline.