The Psychosocial Value of Employment: Evidence from a Refugee Camp
Reshmaan Hussam, Erin M. Kelley, Gregory Lane, Fatima Zahra
American Economic Review · 2022 · Volume 112 · Issue 11
Abstract
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. We involve 745 individuals in a field experiment with three arms: a control arm, a weekly cash arm, and an employment arm of equal value. Employment raises psychosocial well-being substantially more than cash alone, and 66 percent of the employed are willing to forgo cash payments to continue working temporarily for free. Despite material poverty, those in our context both experience and recognize a nonmonetary, psychosocial value to employment.
Keywords
Field Experiments, Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making, General Welfare, Well-Being, Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants, Non-labor Discrimination, Time Allocation and Labor Supply, Economic Development: Human Resources, Human Development, Income Distribution, Migration
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