refugees could apply to ESSN from anywhere they were registered in Turkey and eligibility was determined at the household level. Below, we show that the most obvious violation of this assumption took the form of households responding to the revelation of their eligibility status by altering their household composition.

Table 4 shows the large changes in household composition over time. Within six months of the baseline survey, the ESSN opened a gap in household size of 0.66 between the treatment and control groups, which increased to 0.80 by the 18-month follow-up. The main driver of this change was the movement of children, especially school-aged children (6-17), who, combined, accounted for more than 90% of the gap in household size at the six-month follow-up. Average household size declined from six in both groups by 0.4 persons (6.7%) in the control group and increased by 0.27 persons (4.6%) in the treatment group, while the number of children under the age of 18 decreased by 0.32 in the control group and increased by an almost identical 0.33 among beneficiary households (Appendix Table 7). The changes in HH size are all statistically significant and robust to bounding the impact estimates for attrition. The changes in the number of children aged 6-17 are also meaningful, representing more than 10% of the baseline value for both the treatment and the control groups at each followup round of data collection, and are comparable to those reported in Edmonds, Mammen, and Miller (2005).

Appendix Figure 3 shows histograms of changes in household size (Panel A) and in the number of children aged 6-17 (Panel B) between baseline and each follow-up. We see that the movement of children is part of a broader churn in household composition among the population of international refugees in Turkey: while more than 50% of households in both the treatment and control groups have no change in their household size at the six-month follow-up, many have lost or gained at least one member, with a non-negligible share of households losing or gaining two or more members.

Appendix Table 6 shows that the households that lost at least one child by the six-month follow-up have a significantly higher number of children at baseline than the average household, lower per capita consumption, and a lower share of children enrolled in school. They are also more likely to be female-headed and resort to livelihoods-based coping strategies. In contrast, households that gained at least one child are much smaller, have higher consumption per capita, and a higher share of children in school. The table also makes it clear that vulnerable households are net senders of children regardless of beneficiary status, while better-off ones are net receivers. As mentioned in the introduction, we do not see a difference in the likelihood of boys or girls being sent; nor do we see that households with more elderly members are more likely to receive children. These findings make it less likely that the movement of children has to do with home production, e.g. motivated by facilitating the care of small children by teenage girls or elderly members, thus freeing adults in receiving households to participate in income-generating activities. Unfortunately, we do not have information in our phone surveys about the relationships between household members, so we are unable to provide information about the share of children living away from their parents – be it with relatives or others. Child fostering is not common practice in Syria or other countries in the Middle East, so the movement of children between 18