ESSP Working Paper 55 "Does Internal Migration Improve Overall Well-Being in Ethiopia?" by Alan de Brauw, Valerie Mueller, and Tassew Woldehanna.
Abstract: Standard economic models suggest that individuals
participate in migration to improve their well-being, whether those
decisions are made at the individual or the household level. However,
explicit and implicit barriers to movement both within and between
countries can hinder migration, potentially affecting welfare
improvement. In this paper, we use a unique panel dataset of tracked
migrants and non-migrants that originate from 18 villages in Ethiopia to
examine the welfare impacts of internal migration. Using a number of
techniques and various objective and subjective measures, we measure the
impacts of migration on the welfare of migrants versus non-migrants.
We
find large gains to objective welfare measures such as consumption,
around 110 percent. Gains are larger among male and urban migrants.
However, we also find that relative to household heads subjective
welfare measures are similar for migrants. The large welfare gains to
migration suggest that barriers exist, even within countries such as
Ethiopia, against the free movement of people to places where they would
be objectively better off.
Download the pdf (918KB).
No comments:
Post a Comment