G²LM|LIC - Uganda Youth Opportunity Program - COVID-19 Survey

This study does examine the resilience of young micro-entrepreneurs in the informal sector and their families in rural Uganda against the COVID-19 shock. More specifically, the study investigates how firms have built up considerable amounts of physical and human capital over the past decade versus those that have not. The survey focuses on economic resilience and how it relates to skilled labor and assets. It also provides information on the impact of COVID-19 on frequently discussed outcomes (e.g. health status, food security, urban-rural migration). The study measures the very long-run impact of the Youth Opportunity Program (YOP), a cash grant program designed to set up its recipients as craftspeople in 2008. The Government of Uganda delivered grants of $388 per person and vocational training opportunities to youth in northern Uganda to start small enterprises. YOP invited groups of young adults, aged roughly 16 to 35, to apply for cash grants to start a skilled trade, such as carpentry or tailoring. In 2008 applicants for the YOP were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The experimental design creates two balanced groups of young entrepreneurs that differ only in whether they received a cash grant from YOP and therefore provides a reliable source of causal identification. The research team found large impacts on skilled employment, income, consumption, and assets 2- and 4-years after the grants were distributed (Blattman et al. 2014). In a 9-year follow-up, they confirmed that the intervention had lasting effects on assets, skilled labor, and whether recipients effectively owned their business, while the positive income and consumption effects after four years proved to be of short-term nature only.