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The Psychosocial Value of Work: Evidence from Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

May 24, 2022

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MULTIMEDIA

VIDEO May 24, 2022

The Psychosocial Value of Work: Evidence from Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

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  • Engaging in productive activities may yield benefits that go beyond earning a wage or income, such as improved psychosocial wellbeing.

    This event discusses a study that empirically tests this hypothesis among Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, with 745 individuals participating in the randomized study and assigned to one among three groups: a 'work-task' group which was compensated for engaging in a small task, a ‘cash’ group that received a cash equivalent without needing to work, and a ‘comparison’ group that did not receive either. Findings show that individuals who were engaged in this activity had substantially better psychosocial well-being than individuals who only received cash.

  • Radha Rajkotia

    Chief Research & Policy Officer at Innovations for Poverty Action

    Radha Rajkotia is an experienced humanitarian and economic development professional. Most recently, she held the position of Senior Director of Economic Recovery and Development at the International Rescue Committee, where she worked for eleven years.

    Erin Kelley

    Economist, World Bank

    Erin Kelley is an Economist in the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) unit at the World Bank. Her work on labor markets frictions includes projects in Kenya that document how monitoring technologies improve firm productivity and work with a large e-commerce platform in Africa that investigates how expanding market-access for small firms affects firm growth. Her work on social protection and refugee populations estimates the impacts of idleness on psychosocial wellbeing and documents preferences for repatriation among the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

    Monitoring in Target Contracts: Theory and Experiment in Kenyan Public Transit (pdf) |  Casting a Wider Net: Sharing Information Beyond Social Networks (pdf) |  The Psychosocial Impacts of Forced Idleness (pdf)

    Sandra V. Rozo

    Research Economist, World Bank

    Sandra Rozo is a Research Economist in the Poverty and Inequality Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Her research centers on exploring the effects of forced migration within hosting economies and of the role of public policies in supporting these migrants and their hosting communities. Recent research projects include collecting a representative sample of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia to evaluate the impacts of a large amnesty offered to undocumented migrants. She is also part of the research team collecting the Syrian Life Refugee Study, the first representative panel of Syrian refugees being presently collected in Jordan and has also been recently implementing experiments to reduce prejudice and improve prosocial behaviors toward migrants.

    Masud Rahman

    Economist, UNHCR

    Masud Rahman is an Economist with UNHCR in Bangladesh. He is a Fulbright fellow and completed his degrees in Economics and in International Political Economy & Development from Fordham University, New York.

    Sailesh Tiwari

    Senior Economist, World Bank

    Sailesh Tiwari is a Senior Economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. He is currently based in Jakarta where he leads and coordinates the country work program on poverty and inequality in Indonesia. Prior to joining the Indonesia office, he led the World Bank poverty engagements in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Yemen and Nepal. He is co-author of Uneven Odds, Unequal Outcomes: Inequality of Opportunity in the Middle East and North Africa and From Reformer to Performer: A Systematic Country Diagnostic for Georgia.

  • The Psychosocial Value of Employment

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