Migration in Kenya: beyond Harris-Todaro

Cem Oyvat and Mwangi Githinji

No 16226, Greenwich Papers in Political Economy from University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of agrarian structures on the migration behavior and destination of rural household heads and individuals in Kenya. To explore the complexity of migration we extend the standard Harris-Todaro framework to account for land inequality and size as well as type of destination. Using logistic regressions, we show that Kenyan household heads born in districts with higher land inequality, smaller per capita land and lower per capita rural income are more likely to migrate. We show that for individuals whose incomes are squeezed by larger land inequality, migration from villages to suburban Nairobi, smaller cities, and villages in different districts could be a preferable strategy to migrating to Metro Nairobi. The impact of land inequality is more significant for male than female migration. Moreover, the level of education, age, marital status, gender, religion and distance to Nairobi play a role in migration behavior.

Keywords: Migration; Distribution; Agrarian structures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O15 O55 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-mig, nep-pke and nep-ure
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http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/16226/1/GPERC_Migr ... 0Harris%20Todaro.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Migration in Kenya: beyond Harris-Todaro (2020)
Working Paper: Migration in Kenya: beyond Harris-Todaro (2019)
Working Paper: Migration in Kenya: Beyond Harris-Todaro (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gpe:wpaper:16226

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