Murat G. Kirdar

Impact of Sibship Size, Birth Order and Sex Composition on School Enrolment in Urban Turkey*

This paper investigates the effects of sibship size, birth order and sibling sex composition on children’s school enrollment in urban Turkey. Moreover, we examine how the effects of these variables vary by household income and the gender of the children. We utilize an instrumental variables estimation method in order to address parents’ joint fertility and schooling decisions where we use twin-births as instruments. In addition, we generate careful measures for birth order and siblings’ sex composition in order to purge the impact of these variables from that of sibship size. We find no causal impact of sibship size on school enrollment. However, there is evidence for a parabolic impact of birth-order where middle-born children fare worse. The parabolic impact of birth order is more pronounced in poorer families. Sex composition of siblings matters only for female children. A higher fraction of older male siblings decreases the enrollment probability of female children in poorer households. In the wealthiest families, on the contrary, a higher fraction of male siblings increases the enrollment probability of female children. The finding that birth order and sibling sex composition matters more for poorer households suggests that scarce financial resources are the underlying cause of the sibling composition effects.

Migration and regional convergence: An empirical investigation for Turkey*

Abstract The standard growth model predicts that allowing labour mobility across regions would increase the speed of convergence in per capita income levels and that migration has a negative causal impact on regional growth rates. Although the empirical literature has uncovered some evidence for the former implication, the latter has not been verified empirically. This paper provides empirical evidence for the negative causal impact of migration on provincial growth rates in a developing country with a high level of internal migration characterized by unskilled labour exiting rural areas for urban centres. We utilize an instrumental variables estimation method with an instrument unique to the country examined, controlling for provincial fixed effects. Resumen El modelo de crecimiento estandar predice que el permitir la movilidad laboral entre regiones aumentara la rapidez en alcanzar una convergencia en los niveles de ingresos per capita y que la migracion tiene un impacto causal negativo en las tasas de crecimiento regionales. Aunque la literatura empirica ha descubierto alguna prueba de la primera implicacion, la ultima no ha sido verificada empiricamente. Este articulo proporciona pruebas empiricas del impacto causal negativo de la migracion en las tasas de crecimiento provinciales en un pais en desarrollo con una elevada migracion interna caracterizada por mano de obra no cualificada desplazandose de las areas rurales a los centros urbanos. Utilizamos un metodo de estimacion de variables instrumentales con un instrumento unico para el pais examinado, al tiempo que controlamos los efectos fijos provinciales.

Explaining Ethnic Disparities in School Enrollment in Turkey

There exist remarkable differences in educational outcomes across ethnic groups in Turkey. Moreover, almost a quarter of the population of 8‐ to 15‐year‐old children belongs to ethnic minority groups. Yet, there exists no study that examines the ethnic disparities in educational outcomes in Turkey. This study presents these disparities and uncovers the factors that bring about these disparities, using a rich microlevel data set (Turkish Demographic and Health Survey). In doing so, this article examines the differences not only in the levels of enrollment but also in the timing of dropout across ethnic groups. The multivariate analysis accounts for a rich set of regional and socioeconomic factors, which also display striking differences across ethnic groups. The results show that regional and family‐level characteristics can fully account for the differences in the levels of enrollment across ethnic groups for male children, but not fully for female children. In other words, ethnicity has a direct impact on girls’ school enrollment but not on boys’. There exists a gender gap among ethnic Turkish children as well as ethnic Arabic and Kurdish children. However, the gender gap among ethnic Kurdish children is wider than that among ethnic Turkish children.

Estimating the Impact of Immigrants on the Host Country Social Security System When Return Migration is an Endogenous Choice

This article estimates immigrants’ fiscal impact on the German pension insurance and unemployment insurance systems when return migration is an endogenous choice. For this purpose, it develops a dynamic stochastic model of joint return migration and saving decisions and estimates it using longitudinal data on immigrants from five countries. The results indicate that exogenous return migration - which has been the practice of the literature so far - underestimates the state coffers’ net gain substantially; e.g., the unemployment insurance system’s net gain from Turks arriving after age 30 falls by an amount that is roughly equal to their annual earnings at arrival.

ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON THE HOST COUNTRY SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM WHEN RETURN MIGRATION IS AN ENDOGENOUS CHOICE

This article estimates immigrants’ fiscal impact on the German pension insurance and unemployment insurance systems when return migration is an endogenous choice. For this purpose, it develops a dynamic stochastic model of joint return migration and saving decisions and estimates it using longitudinal data on immigrants from five countries. The results indicate that exogenous return migration - which has been the practice of the literature so far - underestimates the state coffers’ net gain substantially; e.g., the unemployment insurance system’s net gain from Turks arriving after age 30 falls by an amount that is roughly equal to their annual earnings at arrival.

Determinants of and trends in labor force participation of women in Turkey

Female labor force participation rate in Turkey is quite low by European Union (EU) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards: it was 24.9 percent in 2006, compared to 66.1 percent in EU-27 and 60.8 percent in OECD countries. Moreover, it has declined from 34.3 percent in 1988 to 24.9 percent in 2006. The purpose of this report is to shed light on factors that determine womens participation in the labor market and the reasons behind the observed trends over the 1988-2006 periods. An important reason for the fall in female participation rate is urbanization. Turkey has witnessed high levels migration from rural to urban areas since 1988. The share of urban population rose from 51.1 percent in 1988 to 63.3 percent in 2006. Despite the declining trend, the female labor force participation rate in rural areas is still higher than that in urban areas, which has been more stable over time. In fact, the gender gap in participation rate in urban areas is much wider. Significant improvements have taken in place in womens schooling in recent decades in Turkey. The final interesting finding that requires further investigation is the low and stagnant participation rates of low skilled women - those with less than high school education. Over the 2000-2006 periods, the participation rate of low skilled women varied between 10.9 and 11.8 percent. These are considerably lower rates compared to that of low skilled men which, over the same time period, varied between 67.1 and 68.8 percent.

Source country characteristics and immigrants’ optimal migration duration decision

AbstractThis paper examines how immigrants’ optimal migration duration in the host country responds to the purchasing power parity (ppp) and relative wages between the host and source countries. A theoretical model of joint migration duration and saving decisions reveals that the optimal migration duration decreases in ppp unless the elasticity of intertemporal substitution of consumption is well above typical estimated values for this parameter. In fact, empirical results from immigrants in Germany reveal that optimal migration duration decreases in ppp. The empirical findings also imply that—holding individual immigrant characteristics constant— immigrants from poorer source countries have shorter predicted migration duration than immigrants from wealthier source countries. In addition, this paper shows that longitudinal data on intentions can be informative by examining how observed event realizations lead to revisions to intentions.JEL classification codesF22, J61