Labour Market Effects of a Female Stipend Programme in Bangladesh

摘要

Bangladesh's female secondary education stipend programme was one of the first conditional cash transfer programmes in the world. While numerous studies have investigated the impacts of such programmes on school enrolment, attendance and learning, less attention has been paid to their long-term labour market effects. This article extends the literature by studying the effects of Bangladesh's programme on earnings and the sector of employment, as well as on labour force participation and education outcomes, using repeated cross-sectional data in a difference-indifference framework. We find that exposure to 5 years of the programme is be associated with a I-year increase in education level completed and an increase in female labour force participationby six percentage points. However, we find that wages decrease by about 17% because the women have difficulties in finding a good job and end up in low productivity self-employment work.