What is it about?
In this paper, we studied if entrepreneurship training can help to reduce poverty and unemployment among young adults – and in particular, when its impact starts to appear. 6,257 young adults in seven lower income countries took part in our experimental study. Half of them received an entrepreneurship training (the training group), the other half did not (the control group). We tracked the progress of both groups on different training outcomes related to employment and income for up to 2.5 years. We found that entrepreneurship training can have a “boosting effect” on behavioral outcomes, such as self-employment. This effect emerges quickly in the short term and persists in the long term. For example, the training group showed a 22% increase in self-employment and a 10% increase in total income compared to the control group. However, positive effects on economic impact in terms of business performance took more time to show up. The training group didn’t improve their business performance right away, some even performed worse directly after the training, but they made strong progress later - a “catch-up” effect.
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Why is it important?
Our research shows that we need to rethink how we judge the success of training programs. We need to consider how different outcomes interact with each other and that they can develop dynamically over time: we shouldn’t judge training transfer too quickly - some real impact takes time to unfold. Additionally, our findings help policymakers understand how long it takes for entrepreneurship programs to show results. This is important for making smart choices about how to design, run, and evaluate future training programs. Finally, our results support continued investment in action-oriented entrepreneurship training. These training programs are short, don’t require much funding, and can help to reduce poverty and unemployment among young adults.
Perspectives
This article is based on twelve years of research on action-oriented entrepreneurship training. During these twelve years, we had the privilege to observe the impact such training can have on its participants. I hope that this paper helps to make smart, evidence-based decisions when planning training programs that aim to make a real impact.
Janina Peschmann
Leuphana Universitat Luneburg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Overcoming poverty and unemployment: The transfer dynamics of entrepreneurship training., Journal of Applied Psychology, July 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/apl0001300.
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