The effect of Syrian refugees on the school enrollment of youth in Turkey

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflicts, many people took refuge in neighboring countries. Turkey is the top refugee-hosting country today with the number of nearly 3.6 million registered refugees. This study is conducted to estimate the effect of Syrian refugees on the high school and school enrollment of native youth. Instrumental variable approach is employed by exploiting the variation in the refugee fraction. Since both timings of the influx of Syrian individuals and the implementation of new education reform coincide, controlling for the effect of education policy makes notable differences in the results. I find that there is no significant effect of Syrian refugees on the high school enrollment of both male and female youth. However, there are some significant and positive impacts on the school enrollment. Individuals who have more educated household heads and males whose household heads are formally working increase their school enrollment as a response to the refugee influx. The reason of finding a positive effect would be that 18-year-old individuals have lower enrollment rates than other age groups since these significant results disappear if individuals who are at the age of 15-17 are included in the sample.