Employment generation in rural Africa : mid-term results from an experimental evaluation of the Youth Opportunities Program in Northern Uganda

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? The authors experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly unconditional, unsupervised cash transfers to pay for vocational training, tools, and business start-up costs. Mid-term results after two years suggest four main findings. First, despite a lack of central monitoring and accountability, most youth invest the transfer in vocational skills and tools. Second, the economic impacts of the transfer are large: hours of non-household employment double and cash earnings increase by nearly 50 percent relative to the control group. The authors estimate the transfer yields a real annual return on capital of 35 percent on average. Third, the evidence suggests that poor access to credit is a major reason youth cannot start these vocations in the absence of aid. Much of the heterogeneity in impacts is unexplained, however, and is unrelated to conventional economic measures of ability, suggesting we have much to learn about the determinants of entrepreneurship. Finally, these economic gains result in modest improvements in social stability. Measures of social cohesion and community support improve mildly, by roughly 5 to 10 percent, especially among males, most likely because the youth becomes a net giver rather than a net taker in his kin and community network. Most strikingly, we see a 50 percent fall in interpersonal aggression and disputes among males, but a 50 percent increase among females. Neither change seems related to economic performance nor does social cohesion a puzzle to be explored in the next phase of the study. These results suggest that increasing access to credit and capital could stimulate employment growth in rural Africa. In particular, unconditional and unsupervised cash transfers may be a more effective and cost-efficient forming of large-scale aid than commonly believed. A second stage of data collection in 2012 will collect longitudinal economic impacts, additional data on political violence and behavior, and explore alternative theoretical mechanisms.Debt Markets,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Primary Education,Educational Sciences

Do anti-poverty programs sway voters? Experimental evidence from Uganda

High-impact policies may not lead to support for the political party that introduces them. In 2008, Uganda's government encouraged groups of youth to submit proposals to start enterprises. Of 535 eligible groups, a random 265 received grants of nearly $400 per person. Prior work showed that after four years, the Youth Opportunities Program raised employment by 17% and earnings by 38%. Here we show that recipients were no more likely to support the ruling party in elections. Rather, recipients slightly increased campaigning and voting for the opposition. Potential mechanisms include program misattribution, group socialization, and financial independence freeing voters from transactional voting

SOCIO-POLITICAL CONFLICT AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN BOLIVIA*

ABSTRACT: We examine how socio-political conflict in Bolivia has affected its economic performance since the 1970s. Such conflict includes strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Since conflict has costs, it diverts resources away from production, tends to reduce investment and could therefore reduce economic growth. We first review the characteristics of conflict in Bolivia using a unique data set. We then provide estimates of the direct costs of conflict and examine the relationship with economic performance using hypotheses derived from a simple model. In particular, we make a distinction between economic growth that is due to external factors -like changes in income due to movements in the terms of trade -and economic growth that is due to productive investment. Growth due to external factors tends to be positively related to conflict, whereas growth due to productive investment should be negatively related to conflict. Finally, we discuss how levels of conflict, economic performance, and governance might be related in Bolivia's recent history. * We would like to thank participants at the conference on Bolivia, held the Kennedy School of Government in November 2006, for their comments, and especially Francisco Rodriguez for his detailed suggestions. For discussions and background information, we are also very grateful t

The IDENTIFY study: the investigation and detection of urological neoplasia in patients referred with suspected urinary tract cancer - a multicentre observational study

Objective To evaluate the contemporary prevalence of urinary tract cancer (bladder cancer, upper tract urothelial cancer [UTUC] and renal cancer) in patients referred to secondary care with haematuria, adjusted for established patient risk markers and geographical variation. Patients and Methods This was an international multicentre prospective observational study. We included patients aged ≥16 years, referred to secondary care with suspected urinary tract cancer. Patients with a known or previous urological malignancy were excluded. We estimated the prevalence of bladder cancer, UTUC, renal cancer and prostate cancer; stratified by age, type of haematuria, sex, and smoking. We used a multivariable mixed-effects logistic regression to adjust cancer prevalence for age, type of haematuria, sex, smoking, hospitals, and countries. Results Of the 11 059 patients assessed for eligibility, 10 896 were included from 110 hospitals across 26 countries. The overall adjusted cancer prevalence (n = 2257) was 28.2% (95% confidence interval [CI] 22.3–34.1), bladder cancer (n = 1951) 24.7% (95% CI 19.1–30.2), UTUC (n = 128) 1.14% (95% CI 0.77–1.52), renal cancer (n = 107) 1.05% (95% CI 0.80–1.29), and prostate cancer (n = 124) 1.75% (95% CI 1.32–2.18). The odds ratios for patient risk markers in the model for all cancers were: age 1.04 (95% CI 1.03–1.05; P < 0.001), visible haematuria 3.47 (95% CI 2.90–4.15; P < 0.001), male sex 1.30 (95% CI 1.14–1.50; P < 0.001), and smoking 2.70 (95% CI 2.30–3.18; P < 0.001). Conclusions A better understanding of cancer prevalence across an international population is required to inform clinical guidelines. We are the first to report urinary tract cancer prevalence across an international population in patients referred to secondary care, adjusted for patient risk markers and geographical variation. Bladder cancer was the most prevalent disease. Visible haematuria was the strongest predictor for urinary tract cancer

Finance and Enterprise Growth in Developing Countries: Evidence From An Experiment in Uganda

Microenterprises are a major contributor to income and employment in developing countries. There is growing evidence though that they do not expand beyond their intitial start-up point. I present the results of a randomized experiment with microenterprise owners in Uganda designed to explore the constraints to this growth. Business owners were randomly selected to receive loans, cash grants, business skills training, or a combination of these programs. I find that men with access to loans and training report significantly higher profits. The loan-only intervention had some initial impact, but this does not last. There are no impacts from the grant intervention, and no effects for women from any of the interventions. While recent research has found little effect from microfinance, I argue this is because men are not included in the studies. The results from this experiment suggest that male owned businesses can expand from microfinance

Economic Consequences of Forced Displacement

Currently, there are over 42 million people around the world that have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Researchers have posited that this movement has severely impacted the affected populations, but due to estimation and data difficulties, little is known about the causal impact of this movement on livelihoods. This paper presents credibly causal evidence of the effect of displacement. A panel data set on households and communities near a conflict zone in northern Uganda offers the opportunity to exploit a geographic discontinuity design in order to minimize endogenous determinants of displacement and estimate the immediate and postdisplacement impact of displacement on civilians. I find that displaced households experience an initial decrease in consumption of between 28% and 35%, as well as a 1/2 standard deviation decrease in the value of assets compared to nondisplaced households. Two years after households returned home, displaced households still lag behind nondisplaced households with 20% lower consumption, and a 1/5 standard deviation less assets. However, as predicted by a heterogeneous neoclassical growth model, displaced households in the top three quartiles of predisplacement assets appear to have recovered a portion of their consumption, though with significantly reduced education and wealth levels. There is no recovery for the bottom quartile households, who appear to be trapped in a lower equilibrium

Skills in the Marketplace: Market Equilibrium, Personality and Ability in a Field-Based Experiment

Classic economic theory predicts that markets will clear, leaving little or no marginal gains from trade left on the table. Laboratory experiments have largely confirmed this, though the results of recent field experiments have been mixed, with some artefactual markets in developing countries performing relatively inefficiently. I create a multi-round trading market in Uganda in order to explore the efficiency of trading and test if individual traits predict market efficiency and bargaining success. I use a rich dataset on individual characteristics, including indicators on personality, wealth and human capital. I find that measures of personality and human capital of the buyers and sellers predict levels of efficiency within rounds. The personality indicators are less correlated with individual success, though human capital remains important. Finally, rents obtained in the experiment correlate with wealth levels of participants two years later. The results suggest that market prowess can predict some lifetime outcomes and suggest an important role for individual personality in social efficiency outcomes. Future work on market and social efficiency outcomes will need to include an explicit role for individual personality