A new GLO Discussion Paper reviews the evidence in the economics literature to reveal that forced displacement has hardly any negative impact on host communities.

The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.

GLO Discussion Paper No. 583, 2020

The Impact of Forced Displacement on Host Communities. A Review of the Empirical Literature in Economics – Download PDF
by Verme, Paolo & Schuettler, Kirsten

GLO Fellow Paolo Verme

Author Abstract: The paper reviews the literature that estimated the impact of forced displacement on host communities. A comparative analysis of the empirical models used in 59 studies and a meta-analysis of 972 results collected from these studies are the main contributions of the paper. Coverage extends to 19 major forced displacement crises that occurred between 1922 and 2018, high, medium and low-income host countries and different types of forced migrants. Results refer to outcomes related to employment, wages, prices and household well-being. The meta-analysis finds that most results on employment and wages are non-significant. When significant, decreases in employment and wages are more likely to occur than increases with decreases strongly associated with the short-term, middle-income countries, females, young and informal workers. Food and rent prices tend to increase in the short-term. The probability of observing a decrease in household well-being among hosts is lower than 1 in 5.

Featured image: Photo-by-Ra-Dragon-on-Unsplash

GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS,  EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs – downloadable for free.

Ends;