Happy Nice Mall

Reshmaan Hussam ’09, PhD ’15 once dreamed of becoming a “psychohistorian” like the lead character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, combining sociology, history and statistics to save the world. Perhaps, she thought, such a psychohistorian would understand the stark and frustrating contrasts that marked her childhood living in suburban Virginia and visiting her parents’ families in Bangladesh. He sharply remembers the guilt and confusion he felt as he drove with his family through Dhaka traffic, watching children banging bare feet on windows and begging for food and money. When he discovered development economics that focused on human behavior and empirical rigor, the field felt as close as possible to Asimov’s psychohistory.

Hussam, an undergraduate in economics at MIT, supported his natural interest in the liberal arts with his skills in mathematics, experimental design, and data analysis. He took classes with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, PhD ’99, who were the Nobel laureate founders of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), who introduced him to development economics and later served as PhD advisors. “There are notes you can buy from anywhere in the world,” Banerjee recalls. “You don’t have to go for a single million dollar change; look for the little dollars.”

PERMISSION PHOTO

Hussam built his MIT thesis around one such minor bill change: handwashing behaviors in West Bengal. Millions of dollars had already been poured into public health campaigns on handwashing, and there was little to show for it. That’s why people were skeptical of Hussam’s proposal to design a simple soap dispenser that records usage, fills it with foaming soap as an alternative to coarse sticks used for laundry and household cleaning, places it in a visible place in the subjects’ homes, and uses data to use data. Motivate households to develop a habit of handwashing.

But it worked. Providing households with easily accessible and inexpensive soap and dispensers has had health benefits for children: within months, homes with dispensers grew taller and weighed more than homes without them. One key, he says, is “getting kids excited about interaction, which can then potentially be passed on to parents.”

Hussam sees the results as a call to “think with more empathy and nuance about how people in the developing world make decisions about preventive health.” This compassionate approach is what ties their projects together – including her latest research that explores the meaning of the work of Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar to escape the violence of genocide.

After joining Harvard Business School faculty in 2017, Hussam spent four years with colleagues on a project that offered varying levels of cash assistance and work to refugees in camps in Bangladesh. Normally, he says, camps are places of deep lounging. Even when NGO workers organize cooking or cultural activities, they are rarely attended. While some may interpret this behavior as laziness, “what we found was no, they’re pretty desperate to work out,” says Hussam. “Working as opposed to doing activities seems to offer a sense of meaning.”

During the experiment, Hussam and his colleagues paid a group to land a research job for two months. A second group received the same pay without the necessary labor. And a third control group received a much smaller amount in exchange for a short survey. For male subjects, he says, “we found that cash alone barely improved psychosocial well-being, which is quite a lot given their poverty.” Instead, the key was work. Men who were paid to work were less depressed and less stressed and reported 22% fewer suicidal thoughts than those who did not work. Female subjects saw improvements in well-being from cash and work—apparently empowered by the independence afforded by any kind of money.

Ultimately, Hussam concludes, “material benefits alone may not be enough when, despite their poverty, people are so helpless mentally or emotionally.” Any attempt to help must come from a respected and shared humanity. She hopes her work will serve to humanize the millions caught in refugee crises around the world – people who have lost “a place to call home, people to connect with, and some direction or purpose.”