Do Local Children Suffer from Foreign Refugees Inflows? Evidence from Host Communities in Northwestern Tanzania

Abstract

In 1994, extremist militia groups started the extermination of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Over the course of three months, almost 1 million people were killed and thousands of families were forcibly uprooted from their homes. As a result, over 600,000 refugees arrived to Kagera, a region in the northwestern corner of Tanzania. Anecdotal evidence suggests that host communities in this region were affected as a large number of school, health and water facilities were overloaded, crops were destroyed, hunger was further prevalent, new sexually transmitted diseases and other health epidemics emerged, land reserves was deforested, roads were damaged through overuse, and thefts and crime increased. I exploit exogenous variation in the intensity of this population shock arising from natural topographic barriers to identify its middle and long term effects on the well-being of children in host villages. More specifically, this paper examines how children's nutrition, anthropometrics, education, health and work burdens were affected by the influx of foreign refugees.

Keywords: refugees, population shocks, children's well-being

JEL Classification: I12, I31, O15,