The growing popularity of crypto assets has driven increased engagement, often fuelled by promotional content that highlights past returns while downplaying risks. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of behaviourally informed risk warnings in such a setting. Using an online randomized controlled trial, participants viewed simulated investment promotions for two financial products: stocks and crypto assets. Treatments combined behaviorally informed risk warnings with past return information, the same information but with returns shown before warnings, or risk warnings paired with price volatility cues. The first treatment significantly improved risk comprehension and perception by 5% and 4%. These effects are further magnified by the order in which information is presented and by increasing the salience of risk information. Showing risk warnings after potential returns increases risk comprehension by 12% and risk perception by 6%, suggesting evidence in favor of recency bias. Similarly, showing risk warnings and price volatility cues improves risk comprehension by 10% and risk perception by 7%, reflecting the effect of heightened risk salience. These effects are driven by at-risk investors, defined as individuals who follow crypto market updates on social media but have not yet invested in crypto assets. In line with prior evidence, we find no effect among those who have previously invested in crypto assets, likely because their decisions are shaped more by past investment outcomes than by ex-ante warnings.

Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial, this study evaluates the impact of group-based interpersonal therapy (IPT-G) on mental health and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda who were at risk of moderate to severe depression at baseline. The study was designed to test whether lay provider-led IPT-G for adolescents could be effectively implemented using modest resources in a low-income country. It also tested whether a lump-sum cash transfer offered at the end of therapy provided any additional benefit. The therapy intervention alone increased the share of individuals with no depression by 5.4 percentage points (from 18.4% in the control group) 12 months after therapy, but these effects dissipated by the 30-month follow-up. Similarly, small positive effects on human capital accumulation at 12 months were not sustained at 30 months. Surprisingly, the marginal effect of offering cash transfers to IPT-G beneficiaries was large and negative on their mental health, persisting two years after baseline. The paper provides suggestive evidence that the adolescents were frustrated by their inability to use the cash towards their own goals because of the need to divert funds towards the essential needs of their families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated mitigating measures are expected to aggravate the mental health challenges of adolescents. Poor mental health among young people is of concern in itself but is also known to affect long-term outcomes. Given the global burden of the pandemic, it is particularly concerning that limited empirical evidence currently exists for young women, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the pandemic serves as an additional psychosocial stressor for the already challenging lives that most young women in low-resource contexts experience. This article adds to the existing evidence base by drawing on 3 rounds of panel data (2019–2021) to assess changes in adolescent mental health among 468 young women aged 13–19 years residing in rural to semi-urban villages in Uganda before and during the pandemic. Using fixed effects models, we find increases in symptoms of moderate-to-severe depression as measured by both the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 during the pandemic and accompanying lockdown measures. We also find that adolescent girls who faced a higher COVID-19 burden exhibit stronger declines in mental health. Our findings shed light on the impacts of the pandemic on young women’s mental health in an LMIC context, and suggest the need for age-, gender-, and vulnerability-targeted policies that ensure that the pandemic does not undo current progress toward a more gender equitable world.

This discussion paper evaluates the impact of the Uganda Multisectoral Food Security and Nutrition Project (UMFSNP), a multisectoral initiative supported by the World Bank and GAFSP. The project aimed to improve child and maternal nutrition through coordinated efforts across agriculture, education, health, and local government. The quasi-experimental evaluation found positive impacts on micronutrient-rich crop adoption, dietary diversity, food security, and nutrition knowledge. These improvements led to better child-feeding practices and reduced childhood stunting, wasting, and anemia in participating households, suggesting the effectiveness of the multisectoral approach.