![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
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-in-difference framework. We find that exposure to 5 years of the programme is be associated with a 1-year increase in education level completed and an increase in female labour force participation by 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.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.