Impact of short-term labor force exposure on post-graduation career search and labor force participation for high school students in Delhi

Last registered on June 01, 2024

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Impact of short-term labor force exposure on post-graduation career search and labor force participation for high school students in Delhi
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012620
Initial registration date
November 28, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 06, 2023, 8:08 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
June 01, 2024, 8:26 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-02-01
End date
2027-07-01
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
To suggest effective policies for female empowerment in India, it is critically important to understand a parent’s decision to invest in their daughter’s. We study this by randomly varying payment and information shocks to the parents of high school students, who we randomly incentivize to participate in a 2-week exposure to the labor force.

We will test whether being selected for a short internship along with the act of randomly receiving cash empowers girls to voice their demands for education to their parents, and whether the cash can increase educational outcomes through parent’s beliefs on ability or some other behavioral mechanism. On the parent side, we attempt to disentangle two sources of bias on their daughter’s ability to earn income: (i) bias from beliefs on an individual daughter’s ability to earn income and (ii) bias from the belief that most daughters cannot earn income due to India’s historically low femalelabor force participation. On the student side, we measure changes in job-search behavior and beliefs for a period of one year following expected high school graduation.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Hudal, Rubina and Emma Zhang. 2024. "Impact of short-term labor force exposure on post-graduation career search and labor force participation for high school students in Delhi." AEA RCT Registry. June 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12620-2.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Students are selected to complete 80-hour, in-person internships at SMEs near their schools. The internship will require that they come on time and have interaction with clients and working adults.
Intervention Start Date
2024-05-01
Intervention End Date
2025-09-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Completion of the internship
2. Student willingness to pay for career advice book
3. Parent willingness to pay for career counseling services for their child
4. Probabilty student enters a scholarship competition
5. Probability student shows up for an in-person interview
6. Beliefs and job-search behavior post graduation: reservation wage, jobs applied to each month
7. Probability of marriage
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1. Student self efficacy and motivational general attitudes
2. Beliefs around the value of labor force exposure before first job
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Both will be measured via survey. 1 will be constructed using standard instruments from the psychology literature. 2 will be measured directly via question and baseline and endline.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We randomly vary priority for an 80-hour internship at a small-medium enterprise near school. Some students will be randomly paid for completion of an internship. We have a small placebo group, where students are informed they will be paid at the endline, regardless of internship completion status.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
We randomize at the student level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
50 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
4000 students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1,600 Control, 1,000 internship without pay, 1,000 internship with pay, 400 placebo.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of Chicago SBS IRB
IRB Approval Date
2023-06-16
IRB Approval Number
IRB23-0626
Analysis Plan

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