Educational exclusion and livelihood resilience among refugee households in Uganda

Human capital understood as education, health, and skills is fundamental to livelihood resilience. Yet among refugee populations, we know little about the human capital endowments of household heads or how different components contribute to resilience. The main purpose of this study is to describe the human capital endowments of refugee household heads in Uganda and to estimate how education, health, and vocational training contribute to livelihood resilience across the resilience distribution. This study employs a quantitative, cross-sectional research design using secondary data from the FAO/UBOS Resilience Index and Measurement Analysis (RIMA-II) household survey. Data were collected through structured household questionnaires administered to 1,868 refugee households across 13 settlements in Uganda, selected using a two-stage stratified random sampling design from UNHCR registration lists. The Livelihood Resilience Index was constructed using Principal Component Analysis, and associations were estimated using Ordinary Least Squares and quantile regression at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. Only 0.5% of refugee household heads have attained secondary education or higher. Health demonstrates universal effects across all quantiles (β ≈ 0.016, p < 0.001). Vocational training effects are concentrated at upper quantiles (75th and 90th percentiles), with no detectable effects for the most vulnerable. Education effects cannot be reliably estimated due to the near-absence of variation (0.5% attainment). The near-total absence of post-primary education among refugee household heads constitutes a fundamental human capital deficit with implications for resilience and intergenerational mobility.