Do Legal Restrictions Affect Refugees' Labor Market and Education Outcomes Evidence from Harmonized Data (English)

This is the second in a series of three technical briefs produced by the World Bank's Poverty and Equity Global Practice to share results of a multi-country data harmonization exercise concerning forcibly displaced populations (FDPs) and host communities. The work aims to generate knowledge that can improve welfare among FDPs and hosts by informing policy and operational decisions in countries affected by forced population displacement. The data harmonization exercise incorporates survey findings from 10 countries across five regions that hosted FDPs in the period 2015 to 2020. The first brief in the series provided background on the data harmonization effort and discussed its methodology, then drew on the data to construct a multidimensional profile of FDPs and host communities across diverse contexts. This second brief leverages the harmonized data to shed light on a critical policy question for countries hosting FDPs: whether and how legal restrictions on refugees affect key labor market and welfare outcomes. We find that refugees in countries with more liberal refugee policy regimes have better socio-economic outcomes. De jure access to the labor market and free movement are positively related to refugee employment rates, while refugee children in countries with more generous educational rights for refugees are more likely to be in school. The positive relationship of liberal policy and employment outcomes is more pronounced for women.