The effect of hosting 3.4 million refugees on native population mortality

Aysun Aygün, Murat Kırdar and Berna Tuncay

Journal of Health Economics, 2021, vol. 80, issue C

Abstract: As of the end of 2017, 3.4 million Syrian refugees lived in Turkey. These refugees left a country where the health system was utterly broken. Several studies report that Syrian refugees faced numerous diseases during their exodus, brought certain infectious diseases to the hosting communities, and have a high incidence of health care utilization. Moreover, they have much higher fertility rates than natives. We examine the effect of Syrian refugees on the health care resources in Turkey and on natives’ mortality—with a focus on infant, child, and elderly mortality. Our OLS results yield suggestive evidence of an adverse effect of the refugee shock on infant and child mortality. However, we find that this is a result of endogenous settlement patterns of refugees. Once we account for the endogeneity using a plausibly exogenous instrument, we find no evidence of an effect on native mortality for any age group. We also analyze the refugees’ pressure on the health care services in Turkey and the government's response to understand our findings on mortality outcomes.

Keywords: Refugees; Health care resources; Native mortality; Infant; Child; Elderly; Instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I18 J13 J15 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:80:y:2021:i:c:s0167629621001193

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2021.102534

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