Does Survival Chance of Syrian Refugee Infants Differ from the Native Infants in Turkey and Jordan? Evidence from TDHS-2018 and JDHS-2017/18

Melike Saraç , Hacettepe University
Ismet Koç, Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies

Turkey and Jordan are the first and the third countries that hosted the highest number of Syrian refugee population in the world. According to UNHCR, currently Turkey (3.7 million) and Jordan (0.7 million) are hosting around 4.4 million Syrian refugees. Approximately 15 percent of the Syrian refugee population living in these two countries are children under 5, who were all born in Turkey and Jordan. Although both countries spend all possible efforts to provide health services to all refugee population, especially refugee children are under the risk of death since refugee population has specific barriers to access the health services in both countries. The impact of migration from Syria on the survival chance of refugee children is relatively unexplored topic despite the intense interest in refugee issues globally. The motivation of the paper is to use newly collected microdata sets from TDHS-2018 and JDHS-2017/18 on timing of births and deaths to determine whether the survival chance of Syrian refugee infants differ from the native infants in Turkey and Jordan. The paper uses a comparative approach under the control of all possible covariates in different dimensions (health care, nutritional status, birth and birth interval, and household welfare) that have effect on the child survival. The findings reveal that the refugee children are in disadvantaged positions in all dimensions. Because of these deprivations, the survival chances of refugee infants are 8 percent and 19 percent lower compared with the survival chance of native children in Turkey and Jordan, respectively.

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 Presented in Session P2. Poster Session Ageing, Health and Mortality