Are young internal migrants ‘favourably’ selected? Evidence from four developing countries11

Maria Franco Gavonel

Oxford Development Studies, 2023, vol. 51, issue 2, 97-125

Abstract: Young people2 are more likely to migrate than older people. During the transition to adulthood, they make important choices regarding education, labour force participation, and family formation. Using a unique panel dataset on youth born in 1994–95 in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, this paper investigates whether young migrants are ‘positively’ self-selected in observable characteristics, specifically on educational attainment. First, I document patterns on prevalence, frequency, timing, reasons and streams of migration. Second, I describe the factors associated with young people’s reasons for migrating. Results suggest that ‘favourable’ self-selection only holds for those moving for education: a year of schooling is associated with a higher probability of moving for studies, while an extra year of education is correlated with a lower probability of moving for family formation. In sum, migrants are a heterogeneous group: there are systematic differences in the characteristics across them depending on their reasons for moving.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13600818.2022.2156491 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:oxdevs:v:51:y:2023:i:2:p:97-125

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CODS20

DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2022.2156491

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Development Studies is currently edited by Jo Boyce and Frances Stewart

More articles in Oxford Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().