The Impact of Immigration on Native Suicides: An Empirical Evidence from Türkiye

This study aims to present empirical evidence on the effect of immigration on native suicides from Türkiye, which has welcomed a massive influx from Syria since 2011. This study focuses on the period between 2009 and 2016 using a quasi-experimental design, which accounts for the self-selection of immigrants to provinces in Türkiye and eliminates a possible bias. An IV-2SLS estimation is conducted to find the causal effect of the Syrian influx on native suicides. The findings show that while the Syrian influx to Türkiye has not increased overall and male suicides, it has increased the crude female suicide rates. The increase is 1.31 percentage points in crude suicide rates when there is a one-percentage-point increase in the provincial refugee share. The results are consistent with the literature, which show evidence that the Syrian influx worsened women’s labor market conditions and promoted male polygamy in Türkiye. This study fulfills a gap in the literature lacking the effect of immigration on suicide by presenting evidence from a case in which the host country received more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees in a period of less than ten years. The study calls for stronger policy measures for Türkiye against female unemployment and polygamy in refugee-intensive provinces of the country. More generally, the study shows that host countries’ immigration policies should account for all characteristics of the areas in their refugee settlement process.