The Household at Work: Evidence from a Refugee Camp

CID Speaker Series featuring Reshmaan N. Hussam, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
Why does employment generate psychosocial value beyond income alone? Is engaging in productive activity enough, or does one need to be paid for it? And how is this mediated by one's social identity in the household - namely one’s role as a husband or a wife? This talk ex​plores this question in the Rohingya refugee camps, the largest refugee camps in the world, and a setting in which pervasive unemployment and strong gender norms characterize daily refugee experience. In a recent study, Hussam and her co-authors found that gainful employment delivers psychosocial benefits above and beyond both cash alone and volunteering alone.