National Apprenticeship Programme Evaluation 10-year follow-up (Ghana)

This project requests gap funding to complete data collection on 3,400 young people who applied to gain access to a traditional apprenticeship in Ghana via a government placement program in 2012. The 10-year follow-up survey is already 80% funded (by J-PAL JOI) so we are requesting that IGC fund the final 500 or so surveys. The data collection effort was launched in July of 2022 and we have achieved an 86% tracking rate (so far) in the six districts (of 32 sample districts around the country) that constituted the first wave of data collection. Additional overlapping survey waves have since been launched in conjunction with final mop-ups in these initial districts. The original study was a collaboration with the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET, now CTVET) and was heavily informed by their research interests (in skills development, testing, and heterogeneity across training firms) and insights (about ex-post monopsony power in training firms and long training periods). Three nested sister studies randomized (1) access to the program, (2) (conditional on preferences) firm placement among treatment applicants, and (3) a skills-test based incentive for trainers (among women who took up). In 2017, we conducted a 5-year follow-up and found that (1) training increased self-employment earnings, (2) training decreased wage-employment earnings by more than the increase in self-employment earnings, and (3) training with a higher-quality firm increased self-employment earnings. In the 10-year follow-up, we hope to (1) track earnings trajectories in the longer-run as businesses formed by trainees mature, and (2) explore (random) heterogeneity by training firm characteristics to understand "intergenerational" firm productivity in the newly created firms formed by graduating apprentices.