The Effects of Rohingya Refugees from Myanmar on Low-Skilled Wages in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh

On the 25th of August 2017, the military of Myanmar initiated a large-scale genocide of Rohingya Muslims living in the country’s Rakhine region. Over 650,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar and sought refuge in Southern Bangladesh in August and September of 2017, with over 90% of them settling in the latter nation’s Chittagong division (UNHRC, 2021). This constituted an approximately 3% rise in the population of Chittagong, with the figure being over 30% for districts within Chittagong with particularly high refugee populations such as Cox’s Bazaar (IFPRI, 2019). This paper employs difference-in-differences regression analysis to investigate how this influx – and the associated increase in labour supply – impacted the wages of low-skilled workers in Chittagong. It is found that the crisis did not depress wages in the region.