You’ll Be a Migrant, My Son: Accounting for Migrant Selection within the Household

This paper presents a theoretical model to account for household-based migration decisions and derives its implications for migrant selection within the household. Unlike individual selection models, a household model allows us to account for the role played by future remittances, along with earning...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economic development and cultural change 2018-01, Vol.66 (2), p.217-263
Main Authors: CHORT, ISABELLE, SENNE, JEAN-NOËL
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Childbirth & labor
Decision making
Earnings
Economic models
Economics and Finance
Estimating techniques
Households
Humanities and Social Sciences
Internal migration
Migrants
Migration
Migration patterns
Payments
Quran
Remittances
Studies
Transnationalism
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Summary:This paper presents a theoretical model to account for household-based migration decisions and derives its implications for migrant selection within the household. Unlike individual selection models, a household model allows us to account for the role played by future remittances, along with earnings differentials, in shaping intrahousehold selection patterns of migrants. We develop a structural estimation procedure based on an extension of the Roy-Dahl model and provide an empirical application using original matched data on Senegalese migrants in three host countries and their household of origin in Senegal. We exploit information on Koranic schooling and birth rank to predict migrants’ remittance potential. Our results show that, conditional on earnings, household members with the highest remittance potential have a higher propensity to be selected into migration, consistent with the predictions of our household model.
ISSN:0013-0079
1539-2988
DOI:10.1086/695472