| The Institute for Economic Development at Boston University -------- ------------------------Research Review Spring 2001 |
|
“The
Effects of Proximity and Transportation on Developing Country Population
Migrations” While economists have traditionally been averse to immutable
laws, Ravenstein’s law of migration, which in its general form states
that the number of people migrating between two regions is inversely proportional
to the distance between them, controlling for population size, has stood
the test of time well. Both in industrialized and developing countries,
and with respect to both internal and external migration, greater distances
do indeed deter movement. Given this regularity it is quite remarkable
that we understand very little about the underlying causes behind this
deterring effect of distance. In development economics, migration has
been of interest solely as a process of transferring labor from the agricultural
sector to the industrial sector. Proximity or remoteness of a village
from an urban center was generally neglected and development models glossed
over rural–rural migration by assuming a uniform rural sector. |
Moreover, the single-most important source of information
for potential migrants is the network of previous migrants. Lucas also suggests
two other important sources emanating respectively from labor and asset
market characteristics of the migrant. In particular, if labor markets tend
to be more homogeneous locally, unemployed migrants may migrate shorter
distances to better transfer their job skills. If the potential migrant
has asset holdings in his village, then shorter distances make for better
monitoring and control of these assets. Turning to the question of why we
should be concerned about the centrality of distance in explaining migration
patterns, Lucas points to the impact upon the difficulty of out-migration
from remote and poor regions leading to the generation of poverty traps.
Lucas looks at a number of natural mechanisms that serve to perpetuate this
problem. A combination of a brain drain effect and economies of scale in
production serve to exacerbate the preexisting economic distance between
regions. Other important contributing factors include the dwindling amount
of remittances from out-migrants that serve to simultaneously lower household
incomes in remote areas and indirectly remove an important insurance buffer
for bad times. The paper concludes with a number of suggestions for both additional research and data needs on the one hand, and also suggestions intended to better inform policy decisions that impinge upon the geographic distribution of poverty, and hence upon the potential for trickle-down development. |
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