Türkiye'deki Silahlı Çatışmanın Doğurganlık Geçişine Etkisi: İkinciden Üçüncü Doğuma Geçişin İncelenmesi
Impacts of Armed Conflict on Fertility Transition in Turkey: Evidence from Progression to Third Birth

Summary/Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to examine whether fertility transition in Turkey has been altered by the internal armed conflict between the Turkish State and the Kürdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan-PKK) which has been occurring for the last 25 years. For the purpose of capturing changes in women’s fertility behavior in the course of conflict, the empirical analysis centers on progression parity ratios, particularly progression to third birth, a fertility outcome that is considered as an indicator of the pace of an ongoing demographic transition for a given country of interest. The bilateral nature of the relationship between exposure to conflict and fertility behavior and their simultaneous determination constitute the main obstacles in estimating the causal effects of exposure to conflict on the parity progression ratio. In an effort to overcome these two major economic problems, I implement a difference-in-differences (DD) framework that uses variations in exposure to conflict between provinces and over time. The DD estimation results suggest that while there has been a decline in the progression to third birth in all regions regardless of whether they have encountered conflict, it appears that exposure to conflict has caused this decline to slow down for women residing in conflict provinces. Furthermore, the conflict’s estimated effects intensified as the length of exposure to conflict increased. Finally, the findings of the sensitivity analysis provide evidence that the positive association between exposure to conflict and progression to third birth is an artifact of neither the presence of province-specific trends nor conflict-induced population movements.

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