Adolescent Girls in India Choose a Better Future: An Impact Assessment

Objectives

The study aimed to measure the impact of CEDPA’s Better Life Options Program on low-income adolescent girls and young women in India by comparing alumnae with similar non-participants, focusing on changes in education, livelihoods, economic empowerment, self-esteem, mobility, decision-making, age at marriage, fertility, contraceptive use, and reproductive and child health practices.

Findings

BLP alumnae were more likely than controls to be literate, to have completed secondary school, to be currently studying, to have learned a vocational skill, to be employed or self-employed, and to hold savings accounts, indicating substantial gains in education and economic empowerment.

They reported greater autonomy and mobility, including more say over continuing education, working, spending their earnings, going to the market, and deciding when to marry, with a higher share marrying at or after age 18. Married alumnae showed better reproductive and child health behaviours than controls, with higher use of contraception, more adequate antenatal and postnatal care, greater use of institutional delivery, improved maternal nutrition, higher rates of full immunization and appropriate treatment of child diarrhoea, and higher awareness of HIV/AIDS, and many of these differences remained significant even after controlling for girls’ and parents’ education.

Recommendations

The report recommends strengthening and expanding the Better Life Options empowerment model as a strategic investment in adolescent girls, with particular emphasis on keeping girls in school through secondary completion, reinforcing adolescent-friendly reproductive health and HIV prevention components, and improving girls’ nutrition, including systematic IFA supplementation and TT immunization. It also suggests scaling up and replicating the integrated model, deepening work with parents and communities to support delayed marriage and girls’ autonomy, and extending similar life-skills and gender-transformative programming to boys to sustain broader social change.