The Psychosocial Value of Employment : Evidence from a Refugee Camp
Employment may be important to well-being for reasons beyond its role as an income source. This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The study involves 745 individuals in a field e...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099322308162234611/IDU0cdafc33f03b6b048b2083ba08812deb8d85f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37893 |
| Summary: | Employment may be important to
well-being for reasons beyond its role as an income source.
This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial
value of employment in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The
study involves 745 individuals in a field experiment with
three arms: a control arm, a weekly cash arm, and an
employment arm of equal value. The findings show that
employment raises psychosocial well-being substantially more
than cash alone, and 66 percent of the employed are willing
to forego cash payments to continue working temporarily for
free. Despite material poverty, the individuals in the
sample both experience and recognize the nonmonetary,
psychosocial value of employment. |
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