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The report focuses on the results of the evaluation phase of the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT) Livelihoods Services Evaluation study and is organized to highlight the key findings across projects. Section 2 provides background on OCFT’s efforts to combat child and forced labor and an overview of the research questions addressed in this study. Section 3 provides details on the mixed-methods research methodology used for this evaluation. The researchers then summarize their findings in Section 4 and synthesize themes across these projects to provide crosscutting evidence to assess implications for OCFT’s theory of change and project design. In Sections 5 through 8, the researchers provide detailed information for each project to support the findings presented in Section 4.

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Research Questions

• Does the evidence support the OCFT theory of change, namely, that the provision of livelihoods services improves the intermediate outcomes of vulnerable households, such as household income and savings, and, ultimately, reduces child labor and/or forced labor?
• What types of livelihoods services appear to be more effective in reducing the prevalence of child labor or forced labor?

Key Takeaways

• Participants experienced reductions in child, hazardous, and forced labor after program enrollment. Vocational training programs were most consistently correlated with lower prevalence of these practices, while for some projects, entrepreneurship support was correlated with higher child and hazardous labor prevalence. Educational support projects yielded mixed results.
• Program participants reportedly used the income and savings generated through livelihoods services for a variety of purposes, such as investing in businesses, meeting basic household needs, and covering educational costs. Across the four projects studied, participants believed that vocational training increased their household incomes through the higher-income jobs obtained after training as well as through their ability to reinvest earnings in household businesses. Overall, participants and stakeholders attributed reductions in child and forced labor largely to increased income generated as a result of project participation.
• Across all projects, participants reported that participation provided them with a greater awareness of labor rights and practices as well as an understanding of how their work conditions were exploitive.
• Researchers were not able to isolate the influence of livelihoods services from the influence of other project components, nor could they establish a causal relationship between these services and participant outcomes. Available data were not suitable for comparing the outcomes of participants with the outcomes of non-participants.

Citation

Selzer, A. K., Michaelides, M., Li, J., Magill, K., Meza, J., Mian, P. (2019). IMPAQ International. OCFT Livelihoods Services Evaluation. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.