Employment, gender identity, and social cohesion
This project explores whether cashfare or workfare programs are a more cost-effective means of shifting norms around women’s right to work and improving intra-household dynamics in refugee camps.
There are at least 70.8 million forcibly displaced persons (FDPs) in the world today: the highest in recorded human history and growing still. With climate change, some estimates project up to one billion FDPs by 2050. The vast majority of these migrants have been displaced from and into developing nations, a pattern that is projected to persist. Our research is the first to examine the non-pecuniary mechanisms through which gainful employment and cash transfers may improve intra-household dynamics and a sense of belonging in sites of displacement. This is a valuable exercise as aid organisations and policymakers grow increasingly concerned about the protracted nature of most displacement, which, when paired with widespread unemployment, may cultivate long-term discouragement and a deep lack of hope for a viable future.
This experiment offers direct evidence of whether cashfare or workfare programs are a more cost-effective means of improving intra-household dynamics and shifting norms around women’s right to work. More broadly, we contribute to policy literature around the merits of employment programs relative to cash-based interventions such as unemployment insurance and Universal Basic Income (UBI), particularly in developing country contexts (Banerjee, Niehaus, and Suri, 2019).