News Finding: And that could be done at a relatively low cost, a big concern given the surge in the number of global refugees.
Paper Finding: In addition, the algorithmic assignment yielded higher employment rates in almost every location, including locations that had higher and lower baseline employment rates.
News Context: Unlike other efforts to integrate refugees, such as language lessons or job training, the algorithm could be inserted in the resettlement process pretty seamlessly--it could eventually become a piece of software installed in the computers of the officers' already making the decisions, says Ferwerda. And that could be done at a relatively low cost, a big concern given the surge in the number of global refugees. Aside from improving individual lives, machine matching also has the potential of helping refugees overall.
Paper Context: Our optimized assignment increased the probability of finding employment across the entire distribution of refugees, including those who were least likely and most likely to find work. In addition, the algorithmic assignment yielded higher employment rates in almost every location, including locations that had higher and lower baseline employment rates. On average, the employment rate was 34% under the actual assignment and 48% under the optimized assignment, which means that the optimized assignment would increase the employment rate above the baseline by roughly 41%.