Study Overview
Causal evidence on the long-run and intergenerational effects of entrepreneurship and skills training in low-income countries is scant at best. Existing evidence is concentrated in adolescent empowerment programs, which show persistent effects on fertility, marriage, and schooling (Austrian et al., 2020; Bandiera et al., 2020). Evidence on outcomes for participants’ children is rarer still, in contrast to the education literature, where intergenerational effects are increasingly well established.We propose a long-run follow-up of the Study of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Development (SEED), a randomized evaluation of entrepreneurship and soft-skills training for youth in Uganda. Linking a new survey to multiple prior waves, the study will estimate effects on economic outcomes, psychological well-being, family formation, household decision-making, and children’s human-capital investments and well-being. Repeated measures of soft skills, mental health, and livelihoods will allow us to examine whether early socio-emotional gains persist, expand economic opportunities, and ultimately improve outcomes for participants’ families and children. The study will provide rare experimental evidence on the durability, mechanisms, and intergenerational reach of youth skills investments.