Artikel

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

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.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Journal: IZA Journal of Labor & Development ; ISSN: 2193-9020 ; Volume: 5 ; Year: 2016 ; Issue: 9 ; Pages: 1-23 ; Heidelberg: Springer

Classification
Wirtschaft
Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
Labor Economics Policies
Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
Subject
Soft skills
Youth unemployment
Randomized experiment
Expectation elicitation

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Groh, Matthew
Krishnan, Nandini
McKenzie, David
Vishwanath, Tara
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Springer
(where)
Heidelberg
(when)
2016

DOI
doi:10.1186/s40175-016-0055-9
Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Artikel

Associated

  • Groh, Matthew
  • Krishnan, Nandini
  • McKenzie, David
  • Vishwanath, Tara
  • Springer

Time of origin

  • 2016

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