Travel Bursary Report April 2023 - Elijah Kipchumba
Elijah is a 2nd Year PhD candidate in the Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences and Philosophy.
Support from the TRiSS Travel Bursary enabled me present my paper titled “Destigmatising Disabilities: Evidence from Anti-Poverty Program in Uganda” at the 2024 CSAE Conference. The conference held at University of Oxford in March 2024 is organized by the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE).
The CSAE conference attracts researchers and practitioners from the global south, all focusing on research related to Africa. Additionally, it attracts established academics from the global north. CSAE offers unmatched opportunities to network and exchange ideas.
On the side-line of this conference, I held a meeting with researchers from the International Centre for Evidence in Disability (ICED). My research, and presentation thereof, leverages on dataset drawn from a wider research endeavour hosted at the ICED.
In the paper, I document disproportional exclusion of Persons with disabilities (PWDs) from livelihood opportunities and social activities. Using a cluster-randomized study in Northern Uganda, I find the program that simultaneously strengthens their productive, financial, human and social assets helps PWDs a switch from precarious (casual labour) to more productive occupations (own farm). This personal empowerment was however insufficient to change social exclusion and prejudice against PWDs.
If you are interested in delving further into the details of the paper, an early draft is available here.