Individual Migration as a Family Strategy: Young Women in the Philippines

Jennifer Lauby and Oded Stark

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Migration behavior by individuals, migration decisions and migration outcomes are not neutral to the needs and constraints facing the migrants' families who stay put. In this paper we present and analyze evidence from the Philippines suggesting that the choice of migrant members and migration destination are largely determined by familial characteristics. We obtain several interesting insights into the migration process. The standard human capital approach explains the inverse relationship between the age of migrants and the propensity to migrate through the longer payoff period facing the young. However, we find that the young age of migrants is explained by their greater amenability to familial income needs and familial manipulation. This amenability also seems to explain the preference for daughters over sons as migrants. Likewise, the initial labor market performance of migrants is accounted for not, as in human capital theory, by migrants' low skill levels but rather by familial needs which mandate participation in labor market activities that secure certain if low short run returns.

Keywords: Migration of young women; Individual migration; Family strategy; Philippines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (58)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/89566/1/MPRA_paper_89566.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Individual Migration as a Family Strategy: Young Women in the Philippines (1988)
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:pra:mprapa:89566

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().