Hate is too great a burden to bear: Hate crimes and the mental health of refugees

Daniel Graeber and Felicitas Schikora ()
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Felicitas Schikora: DIW Berlin, FU Berlin

No 31, CEPA Discussion Papers from Center for Economic Policy Analysis

Abstract: Against a background of increasing violence against non-natives, we estimate the effect of hate crime on refugees’ mental health in Germany. For this purpose, we combine two datasets: administrative records on xenophobic crime against refugee shelters by the Federal Criminal Office and the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees. We apply a regression discontinuity in time design to estimate the effect of interest. Our results indicate that hate crime has a substantial negative effect on several mental health indicators, including the Mental Component Summary score and the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 score. The effects are stronger for refugees with closer geographic proximity to the focal hate crime and refugees with low country-specific human capital. While the estimated effect is only transitory, we argue that negative mental health shocks during the critical period after arrival have important long-term consequences. Keywords: Mental health, hate crime, migration, refugees, human capital.

Keywords: mental health; hate crime; migration; refugees; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I10 J15 J24 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ltv, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-50797 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Hate Is Too Great a Burden to Bear: Hate Crimes and the Mental Health of Refugees (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pot:cepadp:31

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