Negotiating a Better Future

School data for Zambia shows a dramatic decline in female enrollment around the transition to fee-based secondary school. Moreover, young women of this age in Zambia contract HIV at twice the rate of young men. We propose that the ability to communicate within a household and commit to returning investments may be a crucial enabler of greater parental investment in secondary school. Our study aims to measure how training in non-cognitive skills centered on communication can allow girls to better negotiate health and education decisions with power figures in their lives, thereby completing more years of schooling and gaining greater human capital. This evaluation currently has enrolled 3,146 8th grade girls, using a six-arm design, crossing communication skills and information provision, to isolate the impact of communication skills from other factors, and innovative behavioral measures to track both long-term outcomes and driving mechanisms.

*To learn more about key findings from this evaluation read Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment