We find that the native-refugee gap in men’s employment in Turkey (in favor of natives) is much smaller than that reported for most developed countries. Moreover, men’s employment peaks quite early (one year) after arrival and remains there, whereas women’s employment is lower, to begin with, and changes little over time. Once we account for demographic and educational differences, the native-refugee gap in men’s (women’s) paid employment reduces to 4.7 (4.0) percentage points (pp). These small gaps conceal that refugees’ formal employment is much lower. In addition, the native-refugee employment gap is the smallest in manufacturing for men and agriculture for women, and the gap is also much smaller in wage employment than in self-employment and unpaid family work. Finally, accounting for the covariates, the native-refugee employment gap widens for older and more educated groups, and the gap in men’s employment vanishes for refugees whose mother tongue is Turkish but persists for refugees whose mother tongue is Arabic or Kurdish. Our findings on child labor show that the incidence of paid work is remarkably high among boys: 17.4% of 12-14 year-olds and 45.1% of 15-17 year-olds are in paid employment. We find that paid work is positively associated with poverty, proficiency in Turkish, living in an industrialized region in Turkey, originating from rural areas in Syria, and living in a household with a young, female, or less-educated head. Being older at arrival is highly associated with child labor, indicating that difficulty with school integration drives children into employment.
Our work on the school integration of refugee children shows that accounting for a rich set of socioeconomic variables, the native–refugee gap in school enrollment drops by half for boys and two-thirds for girls, but the gap persists for both genders. When we restrict the sample to refugees who arrived in Turkey at or before age eight and account for socioeconomic differences, the native–refugee gap completely vanishes for both boys and girls, indicating that school integration of refugee children in Turkey has been possible conditional on their age at arrival. We also find that the timing of boys’ school dropouts coincides with their entry into the labor market, whereas girls’ dropouts mostly occur before marriage age. Finally, we reveal important differences between natives and refugees in never starting school, grade progression and repetition, dropping out, and grade for age.
Our findings on the differences between native and Syrian-refugee children in birthweight and anthropometric outcomes show that after controlling for a rich set of birth and socioeconomic characteristics that display significant variation between natives and refugees born in Turkey, refugee babies’ average birthweight and age-adjusted height are 0.17 and 0.23 standard deviations lower, respectively; however, no gap remains in their age-adjusted weight. These gaps are even larger for refugee babies born outside Turkey. The differences in birthweight and anthropometric outcomes are limited to the lower end of the distribution. After accounting for the covariates, refugee babies born in Turkey are 4.8 percentage points more likely to have low birthweight, 2.4 percentage points more likely to be underweight, and 6.0 percentage points more likely to be stunted. However, no native-refugee gap exists above the mean level for any outcomes.
The experience of war and refugee status can alter intra-family dynamics and, therefore, have implications for family formation, including marriage. We find that early marriage is more prominent among refugees who were unmarried at the time of migration than those married before migration; the mean marriage age drops from 19.6 in prewar Syria to 19.1 in postwar Syria and 18.1 in Turkey. We show that this finding aligns with the observed declines in household income and young women’s opportunity cost of marriage. Our analysis also reveals a notable shift from traditional arranged marriages to more modern forms among refugees in Turkey. An intergenerational power shift may drive the shift toward non-arranged marriages. After arrival in Turkey, parental wealth and employment decline. In contrast, Syrian youth have higher age-adjusted employment rates than in prewar Syria. Moreover, for demographic groups with stronger intergenerational power shifts, non-arranged marriages increase more.
