Evaluating the impact of vocational education vouchers on out-of-school youth in Kenya

Summary
This report describes a vocational training program among Kenyan youth and provides results from the intervention. Implementation began in 2008 with the recruitment of 2, 163 out-of-school youths (roughly between 17 to 28 years). Of these, a random half were awarded a voucher for vocational training, while the other half served as the control group. Of the voucher winners, a random half were awarded a voucher that could only be used in public (government) institutions, while the other half received a voucher that could be used in either private or public institutions. The program also included a crosscutting information intervention, which exposed a randomly -selected half of all treatment and control individuals to information about the actual returns to vocational education. We find that voucher winners were substantially more likely to enroll in vocational education institutions and were able to acquire an additional 0.55 years of education. The information treatment encouraged women to prefer and ultimately enroll in traditionally male-dominated trades but did not affect overall educational attainment for either gender. We find limited evidence that the program increased earnings, although the program led to a significant increase in hourly-wage earnings among wage earners. Furthermore, there is evidence that the program increased the likelihood of working in wage employment among those who have been out of school longer.

Suggested citation: Hamory, J, Kremer, M, Mbiti, I and Miguel, E, 2015,
Evaluating the impact of vocational education vouchers on out-of-school youth in Kenya, 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 37.
New Delhi: International Initiative for ImpactEvaluation (3ie)
.