The nerds, the cool and the central. Peer education and teen pregnancy in Brazil ; Eliana La Ferrara (Università Bocconi)

Abstract

Teenage pregnancies hamper human capital and have long-term effects for women and their children. Through a large-scale randomized control trial in public high schools in Brazil, we studied a peer-educator intervention aimed at providing information about reproductive health and reducing teen pregnancies. The program also aimed at helping students set their life goals and educational aspirations.
The use of peer-educators is a common delivery mechanism across development fields, so learning how best to select them to maximize network-level impacts is key for improving development effectiveness. We randomly assigned schools to one of three criteria for selecting peer educators: (i) most connected student using network centrality measures, (ii) most nominated as “popular” students, and (iii) letting teachers select the peer educator (the status quo). We compare the effects of these different methods and discuss their implications for targeting within networks.