Yemen

Olivia Bertelli and Sikandra Kurdi (2025)

This article explores the impacts of a youth employment and training program implemented in Yemen between 2017 and 2018, during the civil conflict that opposed a rebellion group from the North and the Southern government. By relying on a nation-wide sample, we combine standard surveys and public good games to measure inter-group cooperation between participants from different geographic regions. We document that the program led to higher trust and lower “ingroup-bias”. After the program, self-reported trust in institutions and in people within and outside the participants’ community increased. The game results show that trust was lowest before joining the program for players-dyads where one partner was from the North of Yemen and the other was from the South. After the intervention, however, not only were average trust levels higher, but Northern-Southern pairs had trust levels similar to those of pairs from the same regions.