# **4. Results**

## **4.1 Cross-sectional analysis**

In our analysis we compare refugee groups to urban rather than rural nationals. Refugees are living in camp-environments in areas with high population density and usually more than 200,000 inhabitants. Job market opportunities and dynamics for refugees are, thus, comparable to urban rather than rural areas.<sup>17</sup> However, using the rural national strata does not change the main results of the analyses as we observe in a robustness check.

Our data highlights large baseline differences between the refugee and national communities that are in line with the findings in previous studies (Betts, Sterck, & Omata, 2018; UNHCR & World Bank, 2020). Refugee households are on average larger (5.6 members compared to 3.8 for nationals) and more likely to be headed by women (48 percent compared to 36 for nationals) both of which are factors that correlate strongly with household poverty levels and vulnerability during shocks (UNHCR & World Bank, 2020; UNHCR & World Bank, 2020; Kumar & Quisumbing, 2014). Refugees are also more vulnerable than nationals. They are on average less educated with 36 percent having completed secondary school compared to 44 percent of urban nationals. They are also more than four times more likely to have their floor made from lower quality material than nationals.<sup>18</sup> Approximately one-third of the refugee sample is engaged in any kind of work compared to almost two-thirds of the nationals’ sample. The large difference is likely due to the lack of required documents to work (birth certificates, IDs and work permits). They are also more likely to be involved in informal employment than urban nationals which tends to be underreported in surveys (UNHCR & World Bank, 2020; UNHCR & World Bank, 2020). Among working refugees, 85 percent work in trade and services while only very few engage in agriculture (8 percent) or manufacturing and construction (7 percent). By contrast, 55 percent of urban nationals engage in agriculture, 37 percent in trade and services and 8 percent in manufacturing. These differences are not surprising, as refugees do not have the official right to own land but are instead allocated a piece of land by RAS/UNCHR. Agricultural engagement is therefore restricted to the few households that had been allotted suitable acres of lands.

The share of employed refugees is more than three times smaller than the share of urban nationals before the start of the pandemic, which aligns with previously conducted socioeconomic studies (UNHCR & World Bank, 2020). In terms of income, refugee households earn on average Ksh 2,966 per capita a month before the start of the pandemic. In contrast, urban nationals earn almost two times that amount (Ksh 5,315).

With the nation-wide lockdown, the share of working refugees halves to 9 percent while for urban nationals the share falls from 63 to 40 percent, as can be observed in Figure 2. Given the already small share of refugees employed at baseline, these results suggest that after the

> 17 As a point in case: while more than 80 percent of the rural national sample engage in agriculture, refugees do not have the legal right to own land and hence only few camp-based refugees in our sample engage in agriculture (9 percent). The dynamic behind employment outcomes would be very different between these two groups and looking at the results for rural nationals could lead to false interpretations of the labor-market impacts of the pandemic.

> 18 For reference, see Table 3 in the appendix which highlights weighted baseline statistics for the first wave of survey collection.

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