Project 6 will produce one paper on how the treatment of over-age students and repetition policies can affect the school-to-work transition for women, including a case study for South Africa. A second paper will examine the role of cash transfer

To what extent can promotion of female education promote women's economic empowerment? While female education levels have improved recently, low education levels in parts of South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa remain a barrier for female employment. Also, the nature of the education process can affect girls? ability to manage the school-to-work transition. Using long-run data from South Africa, we will analyze the role of over-age and repetition policies on school-to-work transitions for young women (where delayed education might clash with early fertility and marriage). Moreover, cash transfer programs can also affect educational outcomes and school-to-work transitions. We will particularly study the impact of recently implemented cash transfer programs to promote female education and subsequent employment in India. Both analyses will specifically address to what the extent the findings can be transferred to low-income settings by exploiting heterogeneity within the countries studied, and by comparing the settings with relevant low-income contexts where similar education policies and cash transfers might also be relevant.