The Effects of Adult Women Education - Impact Evaluation of a Program in Chiapas

Master's Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics - Business economics Economic Pedagogy grade: 1.0 Università degli Studi di Milano language: English abstract: The study presents the findings of a qualitative evaluation of a women education program in Chiapas implemented by the Mexicanmicrofinance Ngo Alternativa Solidaria (AlSol). The paper tries to assess the effects of the intervention on women’s income and household’s living standards women’s empowerment and mobility women’s and children’shealth conditions and confidence in modern health posts as well as children’s primary and secondary school enrollment. In the last section I moreover try to explore which participants’ or implementation characteristics positively influence women’s performance in the program. The experimental design is based on cross sectional data on program beneficiaries and non beneficiaries. Propensity score matching was applied to available baseline data to reduce observable pre-program differences between treatment and control groups. Results suggest that the program has a positive and significant impact on women’s incomealthough no immediate repercussion on the household living standard is detected. Similarly women’s probability of participating in intrahousehold decision making augments in 4 out of 9 analyzed cases. Probably due to a potential bias in wellbeing perceptions of more educated women the outcome on individuals’ health conditions remains ambiguous whereas the utilization of modern health providers and the probability of children’s school enrollment increase through treatment participation. Finally less remote areas smaller microfinance groups and women dealing with higher loan amounts are associated with better exam test scores. The findings may have useful implications on AlSol’s program implementation and future expansion plans.