Impact Evaluation of the Threshold Program Improving the Education of Girls in Niger (IMAGINE)

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) sponsored the Threshold Program in Niger, which was intended to reduce corruption; register more businesses; promote land titling; and increase girls’ school enrollment, attendance, and completion rates. This ambitious effort involved training civil servants to conduct audits and handle public procurement projects, establish “one-stop centers” to provide technical assistance to businesses, develop awareness-raising campaigns to encourage communities to take advantage of land reform, and construct schools. Mathematica was chosen to design and conduct a rigorous evaluation of these activities to determine their ultimate impact on both intermediate and long-term outcomes. However, due to political events that were inconsistent with MCC goals, the program was suspended on December 31, 2009. Only the component to promote girl’s education had been carried out.

Mathematica designed a rigorous and timely evaluation of the girl’s education component called the Improve the Education of Girls in Niger (IMAGINE) program. The girls’ education component consisted of a wide range of activities including conducting public awareness campaigns, implementing local action plans, providing tutoring and training, providing incentives for school-age girls and female teachers, and constructing classrooms and latrines. Taking into account the early termination of the program, the evaluation of this component attempted to answer three main research questions: (1) Does the combination of education program activities increase girls’ primary school enrollment rates? (2) Do program activities increase girls’ school attendance? and (3) Does the program increase the likelihood that girls complete their primary school education? Mathematica used a random assignment research design to estimate the impact of the package of interventions and conducted an independent data collection by surveying households and schools on education in villages throughout the country. The random assignment design compared the treatment communities to the control communities that were not selected for interventions. Mathematica oversaw data collection in 181 villages throughout Niger and administered surveys to 6,971 households and 16,351 primary-school-aged children.

Overall, the evaluation revealed that the IMAGINE program increased enrollment but had little impact on attendance or test scores. The overall impact results mask important differences between boys and girls, however. While the impacts for boys were close to zero and not statistically significant, the impacts for girls on enrollment and attendance were statistically significant. The evaluation does not show which specific components of the intervention were most successful in driving such distinct impacts on enrollment and attendance for girls. On the one hand, we can hypothesize that the components designed to appeal to girls (construction of teacher housing, higher numbers of female teachers, and the presence of separate latrines for boys and girls) may be the primary drivers of the observed program effects. On the other hand, the finding seems somewhat surprising given that the complementary interventions (many of which were geared toward promoting girls’ schooling) were not fully implemented.

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"Impact Evaluation of Niger's IMAGINE Program" (September 2011)

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Impact Evaluation of the Threshold Program Improving the Education of Girls in Niger (IMAGINE)

Publications