The Community-, Household-, and Individual-Level Impacts of Female Industrial Work

This project uses a large-scale cluster-randomized control trial to evaluate the impacts of industrial employment opportunities on the economic, physical, and social well-being of female rural-to-urban migrant workers and the largely agricultural communities from which they originate. Our research design builds on a centralized, government-led labor hiring system that integrates recruitment, registration, grading, training, and employer-matching of workers for Ethiopia's flagship industrial park. We work with local partners to randomly assign rural communities to a relocation support package for interested job seekers to begin work in the park. We will complement existing administrative data with detailed primary individual, household, and community level survey data collected immediately prior to and one year following the expansion to estimate impacts on female migrants, their families, and their broader communities.