The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola : Lessons from an Empowerment Program

Abstract

The authors evaluate 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 or reproductive
 issues and vocational training. Unexpectedly, the
 post-baseline period coincided with the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
 Our analysis documents 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 16pp 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-enroll 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.