Wednesday, April 22^nd will be the next session of our Spring 2026 Workshop/Seminar series. Please join us at 4pm in the PCPSE Forum for Guy Grossman’s seminar: “Aid cuts for refugees reduce welfare without increasing self-reliance.” Please see below for the abstract.

If you are unable to attend the seminar in person, please use this Zoom Link.

Thanks and hope to see you there!

The contraction of humanitarian assistance is reshaping how aid agencies respond to crises. For the majority of refugees who live in developing countries, aid cuts raise urgent questions about whether reduced food and cash assistance can be offset through work, entrepreneurship, or relocation to areas with greater economic opportunity. We study an aid prioritization policy in Uganda, a country frequently cited as a favorable setting for refugee self-reliance due to its inclusive legal framework. In 2023, funding shortfalls led to a reduction of food and cash assistance by 50% for most refugee households while preserving the pre-existing transfer level for those classified as most vulnerable. Using two rounds of panel data from 5,400 refugee households whose vulnerability scores placed them closest to the eligibility cutoff, we leverage a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effects of reduced assistance approximately 8–12 months and 20–24 months after implementation. We find little evidence that assistance reductions induce productive adjustment. Households experiencing reduced assistance do not increase employment, earnings, or mobility relative to otherwise similar households that retained the pre-existing transfer level. Instead, households accumulate debt, while physical and mental health deteriorate as economic and social conditions worsen. Over the same period, conditions deteriorated broadly across refugee settlements, limiting opportunities even for households that retained the pre-existing transfer level. These effects intensify over time, suggesting that short-run responses understate the longer-run costs of aid retrenchment. Together, the results indicate that legal rights to work and move freely are necessary but not sufficient for self-reliance when labor demand is weak, and liquidity is scarce.