Basic entrepreneurship helps women out of poverty – new evidence from Bangladesh

The world’s poorest people lack capital and skills and work in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh, a new IZA discussion paper by Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul and Munshi Sulaiman
demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural labor and into running small businesses. This shift, which persists and strengthens after
assistance is withdrawn, leads to a 38% increase in earnings. Inculcating basic entrepreneurship, where severely disadvantaged women take on occupations which were the preserve of non-poor women, is shown to be a powerful means of transforming the economic lives of the poor.