Balancing Skilled with Unskilled Migration in an Urbanizing Agricultural Economy

Thinh T. Nguyen, Hisamitsu Saito, Hiroshi Isoda and Shoichi Ito

World Development, 2015, vol. 66, issue C, 457-467

Abstract: In the early stages of economic development, the migration of unskilled workers contributes to labor-intensive manufacturing production. In middle-income countries, however, the migration of skilled workers becomes the more important factor in economic progress. Evaluating the skill content of migration patterns therefore is essential to understanding migration’s economic implications. For this purpose, we investigate the determinants of skilled and unskilled migration decisions in Vietnam. Rural higher education is shown to promote knowledge-intensive production by encouraging skilled individuals to migrate to cities. In complementary fashion, commercial farm development helps alleviate urban overcrowding by encouraging unskilled individuals to remain at home.

Keywords: education; labor migration; labor skills; middle-income countries; Vietnam; Southeast Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X14002800
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:wdevel:v:66:y:2015:i:c:p:457-467

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.09.015

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().