Rural-Urban Migration at High Urbanization Levels

Matias Busso, Juan Chauvin and Nicolás Herrera L.

No 10887, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: This study assesses the empirical relevance of the Harris-Todaro model at high levels of urbanization a feature that characterizes an increasing number of developing countries, which were largely rural when the model was created 50 years ago. Using data from Brazil, the paper compares observed and model-based predictions of the equilibrium urban employment rate of 449 cities and the rural regions that are the historic sources of their migrant populations. Little support is found in the data for the most basic version of the model. However, extensions that incorporate labor informality and housing markets have much better empirical traction. Harris-Todaro equilibrium relationships are relatively stronger among workers with primary but no high school education, and those relationships are more frequently found under certain conditions: when cities are relatively larger; and when associated rural areas are closer to the magnet city and populated to a greater degree by young adults, who are most likely to migrate.

Keywords: developing countries; Harris-Todaro; Rural-urban migration; Urban unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J46 J61 O18 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... anization-Levels.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: Rural-urban migration at high urbanization levels (2021)
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:idb:brikps:10887

DOI: 10.18235/0002904

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().