Improving the Wellbeing of Adolescent Girls in Developing Countries

This report summarizes the state of the evidence and provides policy guidance on interventions that have sought to (1) increase educational attainment, (2) delay childbearing, and/or (3) delay marriage for adolescent girls in developing countries. We focus on these three outcomes for a number of reasons. First, it is believed that altering these outcomes can have lasting effects on an individual’s well-being as well as the well-being of others, for example an individual’s (future) children. This is not to say that improving other outcomes during adolescence (such as mental health or exposure to violence) does not have lasting effects on well-being; rather, for practical purposes, we need to reduce the space of interventions to consider. Second, despite these outcomes having long-lasting effects on lifetime well-being, they can be readily measured in the short-medium term making it easier for researchers to analyze the impacts of different interventions on them.