The Effect of a Livelihoods Intervention in an Urban Slum in India: Does Vocational Counseling and Training Alter the Attitudes and Behavior of Adolescent Girls?

Barbara Mensch, Population Council
Monica Grant, Population Council
Mary Sebastian, Population Council
Paul Hewett, Population Council
Dale Huntington, World Bank Group

This paper examines whether an experimental intervention that provided vocational counseling and training to adolescent girls aged 14-19 in an urban slum of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, India: 1.increased physical mobility and contact with individuals outside the family; 2.increased savings behavior; 3.altered work aspirations and ncouraged more progressive gender role norms; 4.reduced gender differentials in time use. Baseline and endline surveys have been conducted among over 4,000 adolescents aged 14-19 in the experimental and control areas. In addition to descriptive analyses, regression models will be employed to assess change in dependent variables associated with the intervention, controlling for characteristics of the parents and households at baseline, as well as characteristics of girls that may have changed between the baseline and endline, e.g. educational attainment and marital status. Outcome variables will include measures of physical mobility, time use, savings behavior, work aspirations and gender role attitudes.