Show Me the Data: Self-Employment, AKA Microenterprise

Wed, March 25, 2015 USAID Economic growth practitioners are familiar with the dilemma. We want to provide youth, women, rural residents, or some other group with remunerative livelihoods that will outlast our three-year programs. If we invested the time and resources to ask them what they wanted, they would say one word, “jobs.” However, the sleepy job market in their country, province, or municipality is not going to pick up for the foreseeable future. What’s an aid worker to do? A popular solution is to help people help themselves — and “buy” them a job running their own business. We…