IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/ecdecc/doi10.1086-711651.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stay in the Game: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Sports and Life Skills Program for Vulnerable Youth in Liberia

Author

Listed:
  • Lori Beaman
  • Sylvan Herskowitz
  • Niall Keleher
  • Jeremy Magruder

Abstract

Over the past two decades, sports programs have proliferated as a mode of engaging youth in development projects. Thousands of organizations, millions of participants, and hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in sports-based development programs each year. The underlying belief that sports promote socioemotional skills, improve psychological well-being, and foster traits that boost labor force productivity has provided motivation to expand funding and offerings of sport-for-development programs. We partnered with an international nongovernmental organization to randomly assign 1,200 young adults to a sports and life skills development program. While we do not see evidence of improved psychosocial outcomes or resilience, we do find evidence that the program caused a 0.12 standard deviation increase in labor force participation. Secondary analysis suggests that the effects are strongest among those likely to be most disadvantaged in the labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Lori Beaman & Sylvan Herskowitz & Niall Keleher & Jeremy Magruder, 2021. "Stay in the Game: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Sports and Life Skills Program for Vulnerable Youth in Liberia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(1), pages 129-158.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/711651
    DOI: 10.1086/711651
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711651
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711651
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/711651?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shah,Manisha & Seager,Jennifer & Montalvao Machado,Joao H. C. & Goldstein,Markus P., 2022. "Two Sides of Gender : Sex, Power, and Adolescence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10072, The World Bank.
    2. Pedro Danilo Ponciano Núñez & Iago Portela-Pino & María José Martínez-Patiño, 2023. "Understanding the Characteristics of Community Youth Sports Programs Interventions: A Systematic Review and Recommendations," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.
    3. Beber, Bernd & Lakemann, Tabea & Schnars, Regina & Lay, Jann, 2024. "Employment effects of skills trainings in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review of recent randomized controlled trials," Ruhr Economic Papers 1080, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/711651. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/EDCC .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.