Center for Effective Global Action

Globally, the number of forcibly displaced individuals has surpassed 100 million, with approximately80 percent situated in low- or middle-income countries. In these resource-constrained settings the magnitude and protracted nature of displacement poses an increasing challenge. Recent policy discourse has begun to shift away from emergency response interventions towards those that promote investments inthe human capital and self-reliance of displaced populations. This paper reviews evidence of the impacts and costs of eleven interventions designed to improve the livelihoods of forcibly displaced people in low-and middle-income settings. The study team finds suggestive evidence that graduation-style approaches and cash transfers can improve people’s self-employment, wages, engagement in paid work and wellbeing. However, too few studies have been conducted among the exact populations and settings of interest to discern clear strategies for adapting interventions for success in every context. To address this gap, the authors introduce a primitive taxonomy of contextual factors, which encourages more robust discussion of how context impacts interventions. It will be important for future research to both evaluate a broader range of interventions, and to more systematically identify the effects of context to advance our understanding of how to improve the economic wellbeing of displaced people.