An Analysis of Educational, Labor Market, Demographic and Health Outcomes of Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees worldwide.

According to the Turkish Directorate General for Migration Management (TDGMM), 3.61 million Syrian refugees resided in Turkey as of August 2020.

While studies examining the effect of refugees on natives’ outcomes have recently burgeoned both in the Turkish setting and elsewhere, we know very little about the Syrian refugees themselves— despite the massive size of this refugee influx. This is mostly due to the lack of representative datasets.

A tremendous new opportunity comes up with the 2018 wave of Turkish Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS), which provides a representative sample of Syrian refugees based on a household screening procedure using the official registry records from the TDGMM.

Using the representative and rich data provided by this dataset, the purpose of this project is to understand the key educational, labor market, demographic and health outcomes of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

This project will significantly progress the research beyond the current state-of-art first by conducting a rigorous econometric analysis of key outcomes of the biggest refugee group in the world using a representative dataset for the first time, and second by uncovering the channels underlying the observed patterns in these outcomes.

Particularly, this project will address four main topics: (i) schooling, (ii) employment and living conditions, (iii) marriage and fertility, (iv) infant and child health.