News Finding: The algorithm assigned placements for refugees that they project would increase their chances of finding employment by roughly 40 to 70 percent compared with how the refugees actually fared, according to the new study in Science.
Paper Finding: This indicates that there are synergies between places and people; certain characteristics will make a refugee a better match for a particular location.
News Context: In 2016 alone, about 65.6 million people were forced to flee their homes. The algorithm assigned placements for refugees that they project would increase their chances of finding employment by roughly 40 to 70 percent compared with how the refugees actually fared, according to the new study in Science. The group, from Stanford and ETH Zurich, says the algorithm, which could be implemented at virtually no cost, could help resource-constrained governments and resettlement agencies find the best places for refugees to relocate.
Paper Context: Finally, the expected employment returns associated with personal characteristics can vary across different resettlement locations (Fig. This indicates that there are synergies between places and people; certain characteristics will make a refugee a better match for a particular location. In Switzerland, for example, we find that the ability to speak French (i.e., among French-speaking African refugees) results in a larger payoff for refugees assigned to Frenchspeaking cantons than for those assigned to German-speaking cantons ( fig.