Return Migration and Earnings Mobility in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

Vladimir Hlasny and Shireen AlAzzawi

No 562, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: We examine the role of cross-border return migration in the intertemporal and intergenerational transmission of status across seven surveys from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. We use transition matrices and instrumental variable regressions to link prime-age men’s present outcomes to those in prior years and to their fathers’ outcomes. Earnings in prior years are inferred using job-type and occupation-group cell means. We find that return migrants land higher-earning jobs and are more inter-generationally mobile. However, they outperform non-migrants not only currently but even in past years. Controlling for mitigating factors, the role of migration disappears, suggesting that individual-level effects and demographics are responsible.

Keywords: Return migration; intergenerational socioeconomic mobility; MENA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 J62 O15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-dev, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
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http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2020-562.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-562

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