In August 2015 the Open Philanthropy Project made a $30,000 grant to New York University to support the collection of baseline data for the study, "Estimating the Comprehensive Returns to Indian Migration to the United Arab Emirates." This study, led by Yaw Nyarko (New York University), Suresh Naidu (Columbia University), and Shing-Yi Wang (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that will measure the impact of guest worker migration from India to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on migrants’ well-being, migrants’ earnings, and other outcomes.
We believe that this grant fills a time-sensitive need for funds and may lead us to a better understanding of the effects of international labor migration. The grant allows Nyarko, Naidu, and Wang to complete the recruitment and baseline survey of their study population, without which the power of the study would be seriously reduced. As far as we are aware, this is the first large-scale RCT measuring outcomes of temporary international labor migration on well-being.