Project Draft Paper
The Impact of Syrian Conflict and the Refugee Crisis on the Well-Being of Host Countries
Date
October, 2020
Currently, there are almost 3.5 million Syrians in Turkey as a result of the civil war making it the largest host country of refugees in the world. Egypt and Jordan host between half a million to 700,000 Syrian refugees. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) framework this study explores the impact of Syrian refugees on labour, education and living standard outcomes in Egypt, Jordan and Turkey. Moreover, we distinguish the Syrian migration impact on wellbeing outcomes of both natives and migrants in Jordan and Turkey. However, the DID framework may not account for the possible endogeneity coming from the ‘sorting” process where migrants do not randomly choose the area of location in the host country and they may tend to move into areas with better labour market opportunities, and access to better educational and health services. To overcome this issue, we implement an instrumental variables (IV) approach, where we instrument the Syrian population at the area-governorate level of the host country with instruments that incorporate physical travel distance and a “cultural” distance. The empirical analysis relies on data derived from the Integrate Labor Market Survey (ILMS) in 2006, 2012 and 2018 for Egypt and 2010 and 2016 for Jordan. For Turkey we use the Income and Living Conditions Survey (ILCS) over the period 2008-2015 that allow us to explore wealth, living standards and quality of life at the area-neighbourhood, such as crime, noise and air quality. Furthermore, we use data from the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) in Turkey that help us to identify natives and migrants and also to assign the migration population at a higher level of geographical aggregation. The results show a positive impact of Syrian migration in the majority of the outcomes of natives in Jordan and Turkey, while a negative effect is found in Egypt. Moreover, the findings suggest that migration has negatively affected migrants in Turkey, while it had a positive impact on migrants in Jordan.
Authors
Eleftherios Giovanis
Associate Professor of Economics, Department of International...
Research Fellows
Oznur Ozdamar
Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Econometrics,...