Corona

COVID-19 has already disrupted community life and will surely alter community social dynamics for years to come. This project aims to identify and track over time citizens’ compliance with COVID-19 mitigation policies and their access to relief services in Kampala, Uganda. Building on an existing study in which certain residents were randomly assigned to attend meetings with Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA)—which is responsible for the city’s health centers, public schools, and other public services—researchers will survey the study’s representative sample of urban residents to understand patterns of rule compliance, uncover how the crisis alters patterns of intra-group and inter-group trust (using baseline information collected prior to the pandemic), and identify and track overtime populations that are vulnerable to disruptions caused by the pandemic. The ongoing randomized evaluation will also help researchers to understand how this compliance is shaped by contact with a key governmental institution. Embedding this COVID-19 survey into a data collection process that extends to 2021 will allow researchers to gain a long-term perspective on community resilience.

Researchers:  Constantin Manuel Bosancianu (WZB), Ana Garcia-Hernandez (WZB), Macartan Humphreys (WZB/Columbia), Paul Kiwanuka-Mukiibi (PS consulting), Melina Platas Izama (NYU AD), Leah Rosenzweig (Stanford/MIT), Lily Tsai (MIT).

Funding:  UK Department for International Development, awarded through IPA's Peace & Recovery Program and NYU Abu Dhabi.

Status:  Collecting data in the field. The first wave of data collection was collected in June/July 2020. Two more rounds of data will be collected between July and September 2020.

Link to project page

Link to data in dashboard

Partners: Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

National level political and social measures that past research suggest can help explain variation in a society’s ability to respond to adverse shocks (i) are identified and (ii) report on the evolving covariance between these measures and the cross national distribution of COVID-19 burdens.

Researchers:  Manuel Bosancianu (WZB), Hanno Hilbig (WZB/Harvard), Macartan Humphreys (WZB/Columbia), Nils Lieber (WZB/Bayreuth), Sampada KC (WZB), and Alexandra Scacco (WZB)

Status:   Working paper currently in circulation