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: 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%.
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: 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%. Our algorithmic assignment considerably increased expected refugee employment over the status quo assignment (Fig.