The determinants of migrating with a pre-arranged job and of the initial duration of urban unemployment: an analysis based on Indian data on rural-to-urban migrants

"Based on survey data on 1,400 rural migrants in Delhi, this paper examines within a multivariate context the determinants of migrating with a pre-arranged job and of the initial duration of urban unemployment. The results show that the probability of moving with a pre-arranged job increases with education and with age, and is higher for those who seek non-manual jobs. For migrants who arrive in the city without a pre-arranged job, unemployment duration depends on marital status, premigration information on urban employment opportunities, and on the reliance on contacts for job search."     

Equilibrium urban unemployment in developing countries: is migration the culprit?

"This paper challenges the prediction of Todaro's model of rural-to-urban migration that an 'increase in urban employment increases urban unemployed.' It is shown that if the urban demand for labor is isoelastic or inelastic, creation of urban jobs causes urban unemployment to decline and urban-to-rural migration to take place. Moveover, urban job creation always reduces the rate of urban unemployment. The paper then remodels the urban job search process and derives the result that equilibrium urban unemployment would not vanish even if the urban-rural wage gap were eliminated." The geographical focus is on developing countries.     

转型经济中劳动力迁移对非农就业的影响——中国农户调查数据的分析

基于2009年中国农村金融调查数据,本文建立多项Logit就业选择模型,识别劳动力迁移对返乡农民工非农就业的影响,并利用2008年9月之后返乡农民工样本考察劳动力迁移的潜在内生性及可能导致的估计偏误.本文发现:由于内生性的存在,导致劳动力迁移效应被高估约8.5个百分点.相比从未迁移的农村劳动力,劳动力迁移促使农民工返乡后更多地受雇于非农工作,而对自主创业的影响不大.在中国转型经济中,农村剩余劳动力向城市迁移后提高了非农产业技能,为农村非农产业的发展积累了人力资本.返乡农民工具有更多的金融资本和人力资本,将在中国独特的城市化建设中起到重要作用.     

Guestworker migration,remittances and the extended family: evidence from Pakistan

"The paper places migration in the context of the extended family. It models informal loans between migrant and extended family for financing the costs of international labor migration. To show repayments to extended family is important; we trace the effects of such loans on migrant savings and remittance to the immediate family. We employ a standard life-cycle approach, which predicts that the demand for extended family financing rises with migration costs and falls with pre-migration wealth. Remittance to the immediate family and savings retained abroad both fall with the pre-migration loan." These hypotheses are tested using data from a survey of return migrants to Pakistan carried out in 1986.     

A quantitative analysis of major determinants of rural-urban migration in Nigeria

"This paper discusses some major determinants of rural-urban migration in Nigeria using the logit estimation technique. It utilizes cross-sectional data generated from a national sample survey of internal migration conducted...between January and March 1988.... The empirical results revealed that the significant determinants of rural-urban migration in Nigeria are income, contact, cost, spoken English, ability to speak two Nigerian languages, distance, marital status, sex and ethnicity. The results further suggest that rural-urban migration is selective of single people and males. Proximity to urban areas where prospective migrants have relatives, friends and townspeople is an important factor."     

Estimating the Income Gain of Seasonal Labor Migration

Male seasonal labor migration has become an increasing phenomenon globally and particularly for Armenia. This study finds that the monthly income gains for seasonal migrants from Armenia to Russia are about US$480 relative to only US$50 in the case of non‐migration. Individual panel data based on a novel household survey allow controlling for a variety of socio‐economic characteristics. Propensity score matching combined with difference‐in‐differences addresses potential endogenous self‐selection into migration. This paper finds negative selection based on education, employment, and pre‐migration income. This is reflected by a low premium for skills in Russia relative to Armenia, luring seasonal migrants into low‐skill jobs, mainly in the construction sector. The results identify seasonal labor migration as an attractive opportunity to escape unemployment, especially for the unskilled labor force. Therefore, seasonal migration has become an increasingly important source of income for households (through remittances) from low‐income countries and helps eradicate poverty.     

迁移模式对农民工人际网络构建的影响研究

利用2011年全国流动人口抽样调查数据,运用多元logistic回归分析模型,研究迁移模式对农民工重构人际网络的影响。迁移意愿在迁移模式影响人际网络的过程中起到显著作用;迁移距离和迁移规模对两个阶段人际网络都产生负影响,迁移时间对两个阶段人际网络都产生正影响;农民工在初级人际网络建立阶段群体差异不大,呈现"内卷性"群体特征,迁移距离和迁移时间都不显著,而在新型人际网络构建阶段群体差异显现,三种迁移模式均显著,构成新型人际网络差异性的重要原因;受教育程度、就业身份等显著影响人际网络的构建。     

Network effects on labor contracts of internal migrants in China: a spatial autoregressive model

This paper studies the fact that 37% of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job training than regular jobs with contracts. We find that the co-villager networks play an important role in a migrant’s decision on whether to accept such insecure and irregular jobs. By employing a comprehensive nationwide survey in 2011 in the spatial autoregressive logit model, we show that the common behavior of not signing contracts in the co-villager network increases the probability that a migrant accepts a contract-free job. We provide three possible explanations on how networks influence migrants’ contract decisions: job referral mechanism, limited information on contract benefits, and the “mini-labor union” formed among co-villagers, which substitutes for a formal contract. In the subsample analysis, we also find that the effects are larger for migrants whose jobs were introduced by their co-villagers, male migrants, migrants with rural Hukou, short-term migrants, and less educated migrants. The heterogeneous effects for migrants of different employer types, industries, and home provinces provide policy implications.     

The Role of Migrant Networks in Labor Migration: The Case of China

Using recent household survey data from rural China, this article investigates determinants of labor migration, paying special attention to the role of migrant networks. Migrant networks are measured by the number of early migrants from the village, comprised of experienced migrants who continue their migratory activities and return migrants. Observations of early migrants are excluded from regression analyses to enable identification. Results show that experienced migrants have a positive and significant effect on subsequent migration, but return migrants do not. This implies that migrant networks are important, and their effects materialize through practical assistance in the process of migration. (JEL J61 , O15 , Z13 )     

MIGRATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, AND WAGES: THE CASE OF THE CALIFORNIA SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY

The California San Joaquin Valley labor market appears to be at odds with basic economic principles in the sense that despite higher unemployment rates and lower wages, it has continually attracted an influx of in‐migrants, domestic and international. By examining county‐level data for the last two decades, the analysis in this paper is built around two main questions. First, in what proportion does local employment growth reduce local unemployment, increase labor force participation and attract outsiders who will likely take the newly created jobs? Second, to what extent regional migration rates respond to regional relative wages and unemployment differentials? Both questions aim to gain a better understanding of the San Joanquin Valley labor market and the migrants’ decisions to move there, which might shed light in the design and implementation of development policies aimed at reducing unemployment. Results provide evidence that market forces alone are insufficient to correct regional unemployment disparities. Three main findings are offered. First, in‐migrants workers fill most of the newly created jobs. Second, migration seems unresponsive to the unemployment level but responsive to changes in farm income. Third, migration is sensitive to government‐based benefits, property crime rates and housing prices. (JEL R11, R23, R58)     

DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR INCOMES IN URBAN ZAIRE

The author addresses himself first to the problem that summary measures of wage income inequality, computed for Kinshasa, the main urban area in Zaire, tend to overstate the degree of total labor income inequality among sharing units of comparable size. It is argued that this is true for two main reasons: (1) earnings from female commercial activity are not recorded in the available statistics; and (2) the 1960 UN definition of household upon which the measures of inequality are based understates the size of the actual sharing unit. Data taken from the 1967 Socio-Demographic Survey of Kinshasa and the 1970 household budget study are used to test these hypotheses regarding short-run income inequality.
The policy observation is made that, while modernization of the commodity distribution system may provide a disincentive for sharing and a reduction in opportunities for female employment, investment in non-service sectors may equalize the secular income distribution for a given migration cohort. Evidence of unskilled migrants moving from service to non-service sector employment in response to increased labor demand is presented. This is accomplished by supplementing sample survey data with time series on aggregate employment by sector for Kinshasa.     

Externalities in migration

"The paper presents a model which shows that the probability of migrants being mobile after migration depends on the number of previous waves. The model concludes that low order waves provide positive externalities to higher order waves. This conclusion is empirically tested by comparing the interindustry mobility of two sequential waves of political migrants to Israel."     

Migration,remittances, and inequality: estimating the net effects of migration on income distribution

"This paper examines the net effects of migration and remittances on income distribution. Potential home earnings of migrants are imputed, as are the earnings of non-migrants in migrant households, in order to construct no-migration counterfactuals to compare with the observed income distribution including remittances. The earnings functions used to impute migrant home earnings are estimated from observations on non-migrants in a selection-corrected estimation framework which incorporates migration choice and labor-force participation decisions. For a sample of households in Bluefields, Nicaragua, migration and remittances increase income inequality when compared with the no-migration counterfactual."     

Unemployment and Migration: Does Moving Help?

The migration behaviour of the unemployed in Finland is analysed in terms of the causal effect of moving on individual employment status. In 1994, 17 percent of the labour force was unemployed and the unemployment rate exhibited a very slow decline in 1994–1996. Over half of those who were unemployed at the end of 1994 were still unemployed two years later. The propensity to find a job is somewhat greater among migrants. However, the positive effect of moving diminishes once other personal characteristics are accounted for. Moreover, when controlling for endogenous migrant selectivity, an insignificant or even negative effect on employment status emerges. This indicates that the relatively better "quality" of the migrants (e.g. age, education, human capital and unobserved ability), rather than the act of moving itself, causes an improvement in re–employability. Hence, migration alone may not be a very effective mechanism for alleviating individual unemployment.
JEL classification : J 61; J 64     

Sequential migration theory and evidence from Peru

"The standard human capital model of labor migration has been successful in explaining several empirical regularities of the migration process. However, there are a number of empirical facts that have not yet been explained or empirically tested; among them, that migrants usually perform more than one move in their lifetime; return migration accounts for a very important share of total migration rates; and there is a high positive correlation between in- and out-migration rates in the more advantageous regions. This paper presents both a simple model explaining these facts and an empirical analysis using data from Peru."     

The Effectiveness of Indigenous Job Search Strategies

This analysis uses the only existing large-scale longitudinal survey of Indigenous Australians to examine the effects of job search behaviour over an 18-month period starting from March 1996. Job search methods were not generally related to the probability of finding and retaining employment when a range of other personal and regional factors are taken into account. Search intensity (as measured by the number of jobs applied for) had a significant effect on the prospect of finding employment, but was unrelated to the probability of job retention.     

劳动力流动对城市劳动力市场的影响

本文使用2005年1%人口抽样调查数据,考察了在我国大中城市中,劳动力流动对本地劳动者就业率和工资的影响。我们发现,外来劳动力对城市本地劳动力的就业率和工资均具有统计上显著的负向作用,但是影响的规模非常小。对于全部教育组平均而言,外来劳动力每增加10%,城市本地劳动力的就业率下降0.3%,工资下降0.65%;对于中低教育水平(高中及以下)的城市本地劳动力而言,外来劳动力的影响程度相对高一些,但是仍然不算大。另外,我们发现,外来劳动力对本地职工工资的影响,要大于对就业率的影响,说明城市本地劳动力对于外来劳动力存在有限的反应,主要体现在降低保留工资,而非放弃工作机会。     

The economics of the "to and fro" migrant: some welfare-theoretical considerations

The effects of international "to and fro" migration on the economic welfare of the migrants and the nonmigrants in the host and home countries are examined. A "to and fro" migrant is defined as a worker who changes residence from origin to destination without any systematic tendency to remain in any of the two permanently. The study is based on the theoretical framework developed by Krauss. The results indicate that "(to and fro) emigration from a source country to a recipient country increases the economic welfare of the migrants and the nonmigrants residing in the host country, but it tends to decrease the welfare of the nonmigrants residing in the source country. In general, the migration also tends to be pareto optimal from a world point of view."     

Search, migration, and urban land use: The case of transportation policies

We develop a search-matching model with rural-urban migration and an explicit land market. Wages, job creation, urban housing prices are endogenous and we characterize the steady-state equilibrium. We then consider three different policies: a transportation policy that improves the public transport system in the city, an entry-cost policy that encourages investment in the city and a restricting-migration policy that imposes some costs on migrants. We show that all these policies can increase urban employment but the transportation policy has much more drastic effects. This is because a decrease in commuting costs has both a direct positive effect on land rents, which discourages migrants to move to the city, and a direct negative effect on urban wages, which reduces job creation and thus migration. When these two effects are combined with search frictions, the interactions between the land and the labor markets have amplifying positive effects on urban employment. Thus, improving the transport infrastructure in cities can increase urban employment despite the induced migration from rural areas.     

Do Migrants get Good Jobs in Australia? The Role of Ethnic Networks in Job Search*

We study the role of ethnic networks in migrants’ job search and the quality of jobs they find in the first years of settlement. We find that there are initial downward movements along the occupational ladder, followed by improvements. As a result of restrictions in welfare eligibility since 1997, we study whether this increases the probability that new migrants accept ‘bad jobs’ quickly and then move onto better jobs over time. Holding employability constant, our results support this view. However, accounting for their higher employability, new migrants seem to fare better up to 1.5 years after settlement.