Payroll taxes in Sweden were reduced substantially for people ages 26 years or younger on July 1, 2007. The objective of this tax cut was to lower youth unemployment. The question of how gains from payroll taxes are distributed between workers and owners of firms has been the focus of...

The authors address the economic impact of the labor force training program (PAFPA) developed for the informal sector in C??te d'Ivoire. The data contain a subsample of the participants in the agricultural sector, tailoring sector, and the electronics sector, and a comparable control group of...

This study evaluates the employment effects of a publicly-run national technical vocational education training program in Brazil that explicitly takes input from firms in determining the location, scale, and skill content of courses offered. Using exogenous course capacity restrictions, the...

This paper discusses a randomized control trial to measure the short-term impacts of a skills intervention among urban youth in Sierra Leone at the onset of the Ebola crisis. The intervention provided (i) technical skills training, plus on-the-job training; (ii) business skills training; and...

The youth unemployment rate is exceptionally high in developing countries. Because the quality of education is arguably one of the most important determinants of youth's labor force participation, governments worldwide have responded by creating job training and placement services programs....

This study uses a randomized experiment to evaluate the impacts of the training and internship program piloted in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu counties by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and the Government of Kenya with support from the World Bank’s Kenya Youth Empowerment Project. The...

This paper uses a new standardized micro database for a large set of developing countries to (1) describe the patterns of labor market outcomes for youth, and (2) explain the contributions of supply and demand factors to youth outcomes. The paper shows that youth face various difficulties in...

Of the 1.6 million Haitian youth aged 15-24, only 13 percent are content with their lives. More than half of 20-year-olds have not completed secondary education and nearly half of youth in the labor market are unemployed. This paper investigates protective and risk factors predisposing youth to...

Although the ratio of female to male labor force participation rates is higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region, these high rates of female labor force participation mask underlying challenges for women. A large majority of employed women work in vulnerable employment. In addition,...

Do matching frictions affect youth employment in developing countries? This paper studies a randomized controlled trial of job fairs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The job fairs match firms with a representative sample of young, educated job-seekers. The meetings at the fairs create very few jobs:...