The effects of public spending and poverty on internal migration: a spatial panel data analysis in the case of Turkey

Migration and poverty still maintain their importance as two ongoing problems throughout human history. People can migrate for social, political or economic reasons. As a matter of fact, in the recent past, millions of people have had to migrate due to war or violence in various countries such as Ukraine, Nigeria, Syria and Iraq. On the other hand, apart from forced migration, people also migrate for reasons such as unemployment, poverty, decrease in agricultural productivity, fragmentation of land through inheritance and disruptions in accessing public services. Because the basis of migration is the desire to reach better living standards. Especially in regions where the agricultural sector is dominant, unemployment and poverty are felt more severely and the problems experienced in accessing public services have increased the interest in cities/regions/countries where the industrial sector is developed. For this reason, it is estimated that the trend of urbanization has increased in almost all countries and will continue to increase in the upcoming period. However, the desired result and the result achieved with immigration are not always equal and poverty may deepen. Fighting poverty is among the primary objectives of the public sector. Studies have shown that while employment and income increase, poverty decreases, especially with the increase in human capital. Therefore, expenditures for education and health services constitute the most important public expenditures in the fight against poverty. Similarly, each of the other expenditure items in the functional classification contributes to the fight against poverty by contributing to investment, production and employment, provided that they are used in productive areas. In this way, access to public services and migration due to poverty can be prevented. The aim of this thesis is to determine the effects of public expenditures and poverty on internal migration at the regional level in Turkey, taking into account spatial dimensions. In this framework, the indicators of the Second Level Regional Units for the period 2014-2020 have been turned into a balanced panel data set. In the analysis process, the effects of public expenditures and poverty on internal migration were examined in the context of spatial models. The findings reveal that public expenditures have a positive effect on immigration, while poverty reduces immigration. In addition, in the models where the given migration is determined as the dependent variable, it is seen that there is no statistically significant effect on the migration given the public expenditures and poverty, although there is a similar interaction. It is one of the preliminary studies that will contribute to the literature in terms of the research subject that the study is shaped around, the spatial panel data techniques it uses and the findings it has obtained. In particular, the findings are a reference for future studies in the context of determining the relationship between public expenditure and migration, and between poverty and migration.