Regional migration and wage inequality in the West African economic and monetary union

Esther Mirjam Girsberger, Romuald Méango and Hillel Rapoport ()

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2020, vol. 48, issue 2, 385-404

Abstract: We investigate the impact of intra-regional migration on wage inequality in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). We exploit unique data from a unified labour force household survey which covers natives and migrants in the seven economic capital cities of that region. We first estimate the counterfactual wage distributions of UEMOA migrants in absence of migration to evaluate the compositional effect of migration (i.e., when wages are treated as exogenous). We find that regional migration increases average wages by 1.8% and generates a decrease in inequality that ranges between −1.5% (for the Gini index) and −4.5% (for the interquartile ratio). This is essentially driven by a reduction in inequality between capital cities, while the effect of migration on within-capital cities inequality is heterogeneous across countries and remains small overall. Second, when accounting for possible general equilibrium effects of migration on stayers’ wages (i.e., when wages are treated as endogenous), we find similar to stronger effects on inequality, albeit with a smaller increase in the average wage.

Keywords: Migration; Wage inequality; Gini index; Interquartile ratio; West Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596718305444
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Regional migration and wage inequality in the West African economic and monetary union (2020)
Working Paper: Regional migration and wage inequality in the West African economic and monetary union (2020)
Working Paper: Regional Migration and Wage Inequality in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (2019)
Working Paper: Regional Migration and Wage Inequality in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (2019)
Working Paper: Regional Migration and Wage Inequality in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:48:y:2020:i:2:p:385-404

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2019.10.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().