The Welfare Effects of Encouraging Rural-Urban Migration

David Lagakos, Ahmed Mobarak and Michael Waugh

No 24193, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies the welfare effects of encouraging rural-urban migration in the developing world. To do so, we build a dynamic incomplete-markets model of migration in which heterogenous agents face seasonal income fluctuations, stochastic income shocks, and disutility of migration that depends on past migration experience. We calibrate the model to replicate a field experiment that subsidized migration in rural Bangladesh, leading to significant increases in both migration rates and in consumption for induced migrants. The model’s welfare predictions for migration subsidies are driven by two main features of the model and data: first, induced migrants tend to be negatively selected on income and assets; second, the model’s non-monetary disutility of migration is substantial, which we validate using using newly collected survey data from this same experimental sample. The average welfare gains are similar in magnitude to those obtained from an unconditional cash transfer, though migration subsidies lead to larger gains for the poorest households, which have the greatest propensity to migrate.

JEL-codes: J61 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig and nep-tra
Note: DEV EFG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Published as David Lagakos & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Michael E. Waugh, 2023. "The Welfare Effects of Encouraging Rural–Urban Migration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(3), pages 803-837, May.

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Welfare Effects of Encouraging Rural-Urban Migration (2022)
Working Paper: The Welfare Effects of Encouraging Rural-Urban Migration (2018)
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