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The impact of soft skills training on female youth employment: evidence from a randomized experiment in Jordan

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Groh

    (World Bank)

  • Nandini Krishnan

    (World Bank)

  • David McKenzie

    (World Bank
    BREAD
    CEPR
    IZA)

  • Tara Vishwanath

    (World Bank)

Abstract

Employers around the world complain that youth lack the soft skills needed for success in the workplace. In response, a number of employment programs have begun to incorporate soft skills training, but to date there has been little evidence as to the effectiveness of such programs. This paper reports on a randomized experiment in Jordan in which female community college graduates were randomly assigned to a soft skills training program. Despite this program being twice as long in length as the average program in the region, and taught by a well-regarded provider, we find soft skills training does not have any significant employment impact in three rounds of follow-up surveys. We elicit expectations of academics and development professionals and reveal that these findings are novel and unexpected. JEL codes: O12, O15, J08, J16

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Groh & Nandini Krishnan & David McKenzie & Tara Vishwanath, 2016. "The impact of soft skills training on female youth employment: evidence from a randomized experiment in Jordan," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-23, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:izaldv:v:5:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1186_s40175-016-0055-9
    DOI: 10.1186/s40175-016-0055-9
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    13. repec:idb:brikps:publication-detail,7101.html?id=58726 is not listed on IDEAS
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Soft skills; Youth unemployment; Randomized experiment; Expectation elicitation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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