MiReKoc Seminar Series continues with Cevat Giray’s presentation on “Fertility Behaviour of Natives in Response to Mass Migration”. The presentation and discussion will take place on Wednesday, February 7th, 2018, at 13:00 pm, in SOS143. Registration is required for participants not affiliated with Koç University.

Title: Fertility Behaviour of Natives in Response to Mass Migration by Cevat Giray Aksoy (EBRD, IZA, LSE, WEF) and Berkay Ozcan (LSE)

Abstract: While a large empirical literature analyzed the impact of migration on labor market outcomes of natives, their demographic outcomes, especially the native fertility behavior has been largely neglected. Moreover, statistical models of population projections estimating the impact of migration inflows on countries population growth often assumed that natives do not change their fertility behavior as a response to migration. We challenge this assumption and address the gap in the previous literature by showing that native fertility is also affected by migration. Using massive forced migration from the Northern Syria to specific Turkish provinces shortly after 2011 as a source of exogenous variation in exposure to mass migration, we show that natives in the affected provinces increase their fertility considerably compared to the provinces that are less affected by mass migration. We provide several additional analyses to understand mechanisms at play and to show heterogeneity in the fertility responses by population subgroups, using four independent datasets: 1) Administrative data on vital statistics; 2) Turkish Labor Force Surveys; 3) Gallup Surveys; and 4-) Life in Transition Surveys. Our preliminary results show that fertility increase in natives is robust to a battery of specification checks and sensitivity analyses and primarily driven by the behavior of prime age, low-skilled natives and by homemakers. We rule out mechanisms related to the cost of childcare and house prices but suggest that labor market shocks, the diffusion of fertility norms and social interactions are the plausible mechanisms explaining the upsurge in native fertility.

Bio: Cevat Giray is Principal Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London and a researcher at IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, London School of Economics and World Economic Forum. He also serves on the economic inclusion committee at the World Bank and UNDP. His research interests are in Labour Economics with a strong focus on migration, labor market inequalities, family formation, and globalization.