IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v32y2023i5p523-546..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

We Can Manage: Experimental Evidence From Savings Groups in Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Kjetil Bjorvatn
  • Bertil Tungodden

Abstract

Village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) are promoted as an important tool for economic and social empowerment, primarily targeting women. However, there is relatively limited evidence on the impact of VSLAs, and no evidence on whether such programs work better for some groups than for others. Using a large-scale field experiment on a VSLA targeting people with disabilities in Uganda, we document positive effects of the program on economic empowerment, social empowerment and general well-being. The effects are overall somewhat stronger for the male participants, and in particular we find no evidence of social empowerment for women. Our findings suggest that VSLAs can be an important tool for improving the situation also for economically active persons with disabilities, but that additional measures need to be implemented to achieve a more comprehensive empowerment of women.

Suggested Citation

  • Kjetil Bjorvatn & Bertil Tungodden, 2023. "We Can Manage: Experimental Evidence From Savings Groups in Uganda," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 32(5), pages 523-546.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:32:y:2023:i:5:p:523-546.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejac027
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    village savings and loans associations; field experiment; disability; Uganda; JEL Codes: O15; O16;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:32:y:2023:i:5:p:523-546.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.