Pursuing sustainable development through investments in education and gender equality has emerged as a key strategy of many countries and nongovernmental organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. In response, an array of programs and policies in the Global South have adopted an approach of investing directly in young girls and women through empowerment and education interventions intended to combat intergenerational poverty and myriad barriers faced by marginalized girls; doing so is thought to generate what has become known as ‘the girl effect,’ whereby economic growth and poverty reduction follow as a result. However, I argue that by focusing disproportionately on economically-oriented interventions, many of these programs neglect a key lever that may have important long-term consequences for human capital and economic development: social and emotional learning (SEL).