From Workfare to Economic and Sociopolitical Stability? Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Eastern Congo
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2024
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<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Did a workfare program in Eastern Congo have a lasting impact on economic and sociopolitical outcomes? Men and women in Eastern Congo were randomly assigned to 2,674 four-month job offers, or to the job offer plus a savings incentive, hard-skills training, or both. Eighteen months after the program, labor market and savings outcomes have improved, but there is no change across 12 other economic and sociopolitical outcome families. Regarding labor market outcomes, the most intensive treatment—the job offer plus the savings incentive and hard-skills training—outperforms treatments with only one add-on. This indicates that the savings incentive and hard-skills training, when combined, can create a synergistic impact greater than the sum of their individual effects. The results are mainly driven by female beneficiaries, who start at much lower levels of labor market participation and earnings than men.</jats:p>
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Brandily, Paul, Eric Mvukiyehe, Lodewijk Smets, Peter van der Windt and Marijke Verpoorten (2024). From Workfare to Economic and Sociopolitical Stability? Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Eastern Congo. The World Bank Economic Review. 10.1093/wber/lhae043 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31837.
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Eric Ndahayo Mvukiyehe
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duke University (tenure track.) My academic and policy research cut across many topics and contexts, including on: (i) reducing poverty and promoting socioeconomic welfare and psychological wellbeing for the poor and at-risk youth; (ii) political economy of conflict, peacebuilding and development in fragile and war-torn countries; (iii) strengthening state capacity in fragile states through reforming the civil service and traditional institutions; and (iv) promoting women’s empowerment through socioeconomic inclusion and political participation. I have also been conducting (v) COVID-19 research, leveraging previous or ongoing research to in investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected businesses as well as households’ welfare and well-being in efforts to help inform policies and strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s deleterious effects.
Prior to joining the Duke Faculty, I was an Economist at the World Bank’s Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC), in its Development Impact Evaluation Department (DIME), where I helped establish and led the Evidence for Peace (E4P) program. This is an innovative research program on Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) whose main goal was to provide evidence-based guide to policy action and projects’ mid-course correction, while addressing critical knowledge gaps identified in the World Development Report (WDR) 2014 (see E4P/FCV program blurb here). At its peak, the E4P program a portfolio of over 40 impact evaluation studies, which covers over $2.5 billion of FCV operations in 25 countries and has about $35 million in research funding. I was also the World Bank’s Institutional Representative at the Experiments in Governance and Politics (EGAP), a global research, evaluation, and learning network that promotes rigorous knowledge accumulation, innovation, and evidence-based policy in various governance and accountability domains.
Prior to joining DEC/DIME, I worked in the Word Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), where I provided technical assistance in the design and implementation of gender programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. I was also a Democracy Fellow with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where I developed rigorous impact evaluations and analytical work of US Government programs in the Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) sector. Finally, prior to joining the World Bank, I consulted for the United Nations (UN) Secretariat, where I led impact evaluations of UN peacekeeping operations in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia using local population surveys, as part of a broader evaluation of these operations’ performance by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).
I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University (2014), with focus on international security/relations, political economy, and comparative politics. I have taught, given talks and written extensively about the aforementioned research areas for many years and my research has been published in the Journal of Development Economics (JDE); the Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat); the BMJ Global Health; the Quarterly Journal of Political Science (QJPS); the World Politics (WP); the World Development (WD); the Journal of Conflict Resolution (JCR); the Journal of Peace Research (JPR); and the Comparative Political Studies (CPS), among other outlets.
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