Essays on Working Conditions, Occupational Choices, and Discrimination

The Economic Effects of Unsafe Work: Evidence from Uganda's Waste Sector This paper investigates the impact of improved workplace safety on economic and health outcomes for workers in Uganda’s informal waste sector. In a randomized controlled trial with self-employed waste collectors, I first document that workers' willingness-to-pay for safety-enhancing personal protective equipment (PPE) was substantially lower than market prices. Second, I find that removing these financial barriers by providing free access to PPE significantly increased daily PPE usage, reduced injury rates, and improved physical health. The intervention also improved mental health. Treated workers did not adjust their labor supply. However, by the end of the study period, treated individuals achieved a substantial increase in earnings. These earnings effects were driven by improved productivity and complemented by significant improvements in financial well-being and food security. The findings demonstrate that reducing financial barriers to workplace safety can yield significant health and economic benefits for workers in low-income occupations. Information, Expectations, and Preferences: Occupational Choices of Young Adults in Uganda Through a survey of 1,003 young men and women in urban Uganda, this paper highlights the role of information, expectations, and preferences for occupational choice. First, we show that respondents were misinformed about population earnings and overoptimistic about their own prospects. Providing information lowered their expectations but did not affect their choices. Second, we isolate preferences by estimating a random utility model and find that financial returns and family approval are important determinants of occupational choice. Finally, we show that expectations and preferences translate into occupational sorting by gender, a major driver of the gender earnings gap. We investigate possible avenues to mitigate this sorting. Simulated counterfactuals suggest that relaxing perceived family approval constraints is associated with an increase in the share of women choosing a male-dominated occupation. The Colonial Roots of Homophobic Attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa Homophobic attitudes are pervasive across Sub-Saharan Africa. A widespread hypothesis states that colonialism, and particularly the British colonial regime, promoted homophobic views. In this paper, we test these hypotheses using a border regression discontinuity design and comparing members of the same ethnic group residing on different sides of former colonial borders. First, focusing on the case study of Liberia, we find that individuals residing in formerly colonized states are more homophobic than their ethnic peers in uncolonized Liberia. Second, moving to continent-wide evidence, we show that individuals in former British colonies are more likely to hold homophobic attitudes compared to those in former Portuguese colonies but do not differ significantly from individuals in former French colonies. Finally, leveraging within-country variation in colonizer identity in Cameroon provides additional suggestive evidence that aligns with these findings, although this analysis is limited by low statistical power. We conclude that while colonialism played a significant role in shaping homophobic attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa, British colonial administrations did not stand out as more influential in fostering these views compared to French administrations, while Portuguese colonial administrations were associated with more tolerant attitudes.