Stigma and Social Cover: A Mental Health Care Experiment in Refugee Networks (Job Market Paper)
People may not seek mental health care due to stigma. But if stigma also prevents people from even learning about services, then its consequences may be far greater. I design a field experiment with 847 Syrian refugee friend groups in Jordan to measure willingness to share information about mental health services. First, I document significant local knowledge about who may be depressed, implying individuals may be able to efficiently target information. Despite being compensated to share, people hold back information: only 22% of friends receive information. The study’s main finding is that giving individuals social cover, by encouraging them to disclose that they are compensated to share information, raises sharing rates by 37%. Consistent with a social cover mechanism, these effects are strongest for senders who are prior mental health care users. In a follow-up experiment I show that senders can use the excuse of being paid without decreasing recipients’ interest in the services. In a reversal of the common prediction that financial incentives may crowd out prosocial behavior, I instead find that in this setting with stigma, increasing the visibility of financial incentives increases prosocial participation.
Work in Progress
Alleviating Behavioral Constraints to Digital Employment for Refugees and Potential Migrants (with Layane Alhorr and Alice Danon) (Full funding secured)
Abstract
The majority of refugees globally have limited access to local labor market opportunities due to legal restrictions and high unemployment in predominantly low and middle-income host countries. In this project we conduct a field experiment with 2000 refugees in the Middle East and Africa to generate evidence on the potential of online work to integrate geographically and economically marginalized groups into the global workforce. The study aims to lift informational, logistical, and behavioral barriers to technology adoption through a combination of training and professional mentorship. The study will contribute to understanding the effect of access to online labor markets on human capital investments, migration intentions, integration, and employment outcomes.
Housing Subsidies and Well-being: Forecasts and Experimental Evidence from Syrian Refugees in Jordan (with Samuel Leone, Edward Miguel, Sandra Rozo, Sarah Stillman, Bailey Palmer and Abdulrazzak Tamim)
Draft available upon request
Abstract
Housing subsidies have been shown to be an effective means of poverty reduction in US and other developed contexts. However, there is less evidence on the efficacy of housing subsidies and improvements in low-income countries. To address this gap, we conducted a randomized controlled trial evaluating a housing subsidy program that offers both rent subsidies and housing improvements to existing homes of Syrian refugees in Jordan. In the short run we find evidence that housing subsidies decrease new debt but that households also welcomed more individuals into their households (specifically teenage boys), which paradoxically increased food insecurity in the treatment group.
The Socio-Economic Impacts of Water Scarcity: Evidence from Jordan with Lydia Assouad and Giulia Buccione. (Exploratory funding and geospatial data secured)
Abstract
With 1.8 billion people globally expected to be living in “absolute” water scarcity by 2025 (United Nations 2022), understanding how water scarcity affects households’ socioeconomic outcomes is essential. This project utilizes rich spatial data on the water delivery infrastructure in Jordan, one of the world’s most water-scarce countries, with longitudinal survey data to identify the impacts of varying water access on households’ socioeconomic outcomes including education, mental health, willingness to pay for water, and labor market engagement. Qualitative research suggests that women’s traditional role in the household in Jordan may lead to an unequal burden of the costs of water scarcity, and thus the project will investigate gender differences in the key outcomes.
Comparing the Economic Well-being of Host Communities and Refugees in Jordan During the COVID-19 Pandemic (with Laura Rodriguez-Takeuchi)
Abstract
The World Bank estimated that three million additional people fell into extreme poverty in the MENA region in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis (World Bank, 2020). This paper tracks and compares the socio-economic wellbeing of a representative sample of Jordanian and Syrian refugee households in Jordan in three rounds of surveying between March 2021 and June 2022. In contrast to earlier literature, the study follows households one and two years into the crisis. By collecting contemporaneous data on Jordanians and Syrian refugees the study allows for a close comparison of the wellbeing of both populations during the pandemic.
The Syrian Refugee Life Study (S-RLS) co-founder, with Edward Miguel and Sandra Rozo.
4th annual round underway. The S-RLS is one of the first longitudinal data collection efforts to survey a large, representative refugee sample. Partial first round publicly available here.
Refugee labor response to conflict fluctuations (Analysis stage)
Human-centered design for a mental health awareness WhatsApp campaign, with Rachit Shah (International Rescue Committee)
Publications
The Syrian Refugee Life Study: First Glance (with Edward Miguel, Bailey Palmer, Sandra Rozo, Sarah Stillman and Abdulrazzak Tamim) Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2022.
This paper presents descriptive statistics from the first wave of the Syrian Refugee Life Study (S-RLS), which began in 2020. S-RLS is a longitudinal study that tracks a representative sample of approximately 2,500 registered Syrian refugee households in Jordan. It collects comprehensive data on sociodemographic variables, health and well-being, preferences, social capital, attitudes, and safety and crime perceptions. We use these data to document sociodemographic characteristics of Syrian refugees in Jordan and compare them to representative populations in the 2016 Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey (JLMPS). Our findings point to lags in basic service access, housing quality, and educational attainment for Syrian refugees relative to non-refugees. The impacts of the pandemic may partially explain these disparities. The data also show that most Syrian refugees have not recovered economically after Covid-19 and have larger gender disparities in income, employment, prevalence of child marriage, and gender attitudes than their non-refugee counterparts. Finally, mental health problems were common for Syrian refugees in 2020, with depression indicated among more than 45 per cent of the phone survey sample and 61 per cent of the in-person survey sample.