Circular migration, small-scale logging, and household livelihoods in Uganda

Little is known about the contribution of migrant logging to rural livelihoods in East Africa. In this paper, we analyze logging by circular migrants in land constrained and population dense southwestern Uganda. Drawing on a sample of 180 households, including both migrant and non-migrant households, we describe the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of migrant loggers, estimate the contribution of migrant logging to household income portfolios, test several hypotheses regarding why households decide to undertake this relatively risky activity, and explore the role of social networks as a determinant of higher incomes for migrant loggers. We find that household endowments of land, labor, and capital are different for migrant logger and comparison group households. Above all, labor endowments appear to be driving decisions to participate in logging. We find support for two migration hypotheses: higher expected incomes and wages at destination; and relative deprivation at origin. We find strong evidence that migrant logging reduces income inequality in the home community.     

子女随迁是否有助于改善进城农民工的营养摄入?

从"只身外出"到"举家迁徙"的农民工流动趋势转变,子女是否随迁逐渐成为进城农民工家庭面临的重要选择.本文利用"城镇外来务工人员就业和食品需求"调查数据,考察了子女随迁对进城农民工营养摄入量的影响.结果表明:在控制了收入和劳动强度等因素后,与子女未随迁的农民工相比,有子女随迁农民工的热量摄入量显著增加了4.9％,从营养摄...     

Contextualizing Mexican Migrant Education Selectivity

The debate on whether Mexican immigrants are positively or negatively selected on education has been limited by studying immigrants in data collected only from the sending or the destination country. Using nationally representative data from Mexico that tracked migrants to the United States prospectively, we examine the education selectivity of Mexicans who immigrated to the United States from 2002 to 2005. We find that using reports of migration by remaining household members and proxy substitution of migration education underestimates migrant selectivity. Migrant men and women were positively selected within households and rural municipalities of origin but negatively selected from the national educational distribution. Differences in selectivity by size of place, as well as when considering the local or national context, means that the answer of whether immigrants are positively or negatively selected on education depends on the context considered.     

贫困地区劳动力迁移、农户收入与贫困的缓解——基于新疆农户面板数据的实证分析

本文基于新疆30个贫困县、3000个农户、2008-2010年的微观面板数据,在控制了家庭规模、劳动力数量等家庭特征变量和粮食播种面积等村庄特征变量的前提下．运用固定效应法与工具变量法分别考察了劳动力迁移规模、迁移方式与迁移区位对家庭收入的影响．并进一步分析了劳动力迁移对贫困的缓解效应。回归结果表明：劳动力迁移规模虽然对农户农业收入有负向影响．但显著提高了农户人均收入与利他性收入：自发性迁移与政府组织性迁移方式均能显著提高农户收入,且自发性迁移的作用更强;省内县外迁移对农户收入的提高最为显著,其次为县内乡外迁移．省外迁移不影响农户收入：劳动力迁移规模提高了中等收入农户的收入水平。但对贫困户的贫困无缓解效应．也不影响富裕户的收入水平。     

Escape route to dependency? Female migration from Sri Lanka to the Middle East

This article looks at labor migration with the sex component turned upside down, where the woman leaves hearth and home in search of work in distant lands. The sending country is Sri Lanka, and the women migrate as maids to Arab households in the Gulf area. Labor migration must be understood in the context of the economic and social development that has made migration possible, or rather pushed it forward. Today, the export of labor is the 2nd biggest source of foreign earnings for Sri Lanka, and females constitute the largest single group of labor migrants. There is 1 clear aspect of female migration: it is almost without exception the poorest strata of society that send their women to the Gulf as housemaids. 3 factors tend to reduce the value of wages earned in the Middle East: 1) for a majority of the migrants there are high social costs involved, 2) there are high transaction costs just to obtain a Gulf job, and 3) performing paid housework tends to be regarded as a low-status occupation and is less attractive to households that have alternative means of income. Not only are the migrant women themselves exposed to a very different society, with different values and ways of living, but also the whole community at home gets a concept of "abroad." The Sri Lankan government expects the contingent of female migrants to grow, though against this is the fact that Sri Lanka now faces stronger competition in female labor exports from other Asian countries.     

Relative deprivation and international migration oded stark

This article provides theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence that international migration decisions are influenced by relative as well as absolute income considerations. Potential gains in absolute income through migration are likely to play an important role in households' migration decisions, but international migration by household members who hold promise for success as labor migrants can also be an effective strategy to improve a household's income position relative to others in the household's reference group. The findings reported in this article provide empirical support for the hypothesis that relative deprivation plays a significant role in Mexico-to-U.S. migration decisions. The findings also suggest that this migration is an effective mechanism for achieving income gains in households that send migrants to the U.S. and that households wisely choose as migrants those of their members who are most likely to provide net income gains.     

The Effect of Family Member Migration on Education and Work Among Nonmigrant Youth in Mexico

While academic and policy circles have given much attention to the assimilatory experiences of Mexican immigrants in the United States, less is known about those who stay behind—an especially unfortunate oversight given the increasing number of Mexican youth with migrant family members. Of the studies on this topic, most have sought to identify the effect that migration has on youths’ migratory and educational aspirations, often using qualitative methods in individual sending communities. The present article supplements this research in two ways: (1) in addition to assessing educational outcomes, the scope of the analysis is expanded to include nonmigrants’ interaction with another homeland institution of upward mobility: the labor market; and (2) using a large demographic data set, statistical techniques are employed to adjust for unobserved selectivity into the migrant family-member population, thus accounting for a potentially serious source of bias. The results suggest that youth in migrant-sending families are less likely to complete the educational transitions leading up to postsecondary school and have a lower probability of participating in the local economy. The results also indicate that unobserved factors play a “nonignorable” role in sorting youth into migrant and nonmigrant families.     

劳动力外出务工对农户农业商品化率的影响——基于江西省四个县农户调研的实证分析

农村劳动力向非农产业和城镇转移是提高农业商品化水平的必然要求。本文使用近期的农户调研数据考察了家庭成员外出务工对农户农业商品化率的影响。计量分析表明,从整体上看,务工户与非务工户之间的农业商品率不存在显著差异。我们将农业生产按要素密集程度进行划分后,才发现成员外出务工所带来的潜在影响,务工户粮食生产的商品化率有了提高,而其它农业生产的商品化率则显著下降了。此外,我们还发现,农地市场及农村信贷市场发育对农户农业商品化发展具有重要作用。     

Men’s Migration and Women’s Fertility in Rural Mozambique

Labor migration profoundly affects households throughout rural Africa. This study looks at how men’s labor migration influences marital fertility in a context where such migration has been massive while its economic returns are increasingly uncertain. Using data from a survey of married women in southern Mozambique, we start with an event-history analysis of birth rates among women married to migrants and those married to nonmigrants. The model detects a lower birth rate among migrants’ wives, which tends to be partially compensated for by an increased birth rate upon cessation of migration. An analysis of women’s lifetime fertility shows that it decreases as the time spent in migration by their husbands accrues. When we compare reproductive intentions stated by respondents with migrant and nonmigrant husbands, we find that migrants’ wives are more likely to want another child regardless of the number of living children, but the difference is significant only for women who see migration as economically benefiting their households. Yet, such women are also significantly more likely to use modern contraception than other women. We interpret these results in light of the debate on enhancing versus disrupting effects of labor migration on families and households in contemporary developing settings.     

Marriage Migration and Inequality in India, 1983–2008

Using National Sample Survey data from 1983 to 2007–08, we investigate rising rates of female marriage migration in India. We find little evidence to support the idea that marriage migration is a form of disguised economic migration by women. We hypothesise that it is instead a result of the changing patterns of marriage by socioeconomic status. Regression analysis indicates that poor families are increasingly more likely to have brides who in‐migrate, a finding that is robust across a sectoral disaggregation of marriage migration. We also find that urban inequality increases the likelihood of migration by intensifying class stratifications within urban India, increasing the need for poorer urban households to seek migrant brides. Marriage thus serves to reinforce rather than undermine larger patterns of class (and not just caste) inequality.     

大城市外来人口迁移行为影响因素分析

利用2008年四大城市的外来人口问卷调查资料,运用多层次Logit模型分析影响大城市外来人口迁移行为的个体因素和迁入地因素。研究发现,外来人口的迁移行为发生较大的变化,城城迁移所占比重的上升导致性别、婚姻状况以及户口类型等因素对迁移概率的影响并不显著,迁移更多地表现为以家庭为单位;由于外来人口在就业和工资收入上受到不同程度的歧视,加之迁入地产业结构调整升级,就业岗位的增加对外来人口的吸引力有所下降,并且其预期收入水平与城市居民平均收入水平相脱离;城市平均工资增长率的提高对非正规部门劳动力产生了挤出效应,减小了潜在迁移者的迁移概率。     

劳动力迁移对收入分配的影响研究——以重庆市为例

劳动力迁移对收入分配影响的实证研究,可以度量我国劳动力迁移对收入水平提高程度和收入分配不均等程度,证实劳动力迁移可以大大提高迁移劳动力的收入水平,对于缩小地区、城乡之间以及不同人口特征的收入分配差距具有积极作用,稳定有序的劳动力迁移对于经济社会持续发展提供动力。     

Different Reasons,Different Results: Implications of Migration by Gender and Family Status

Previous research on migration and gendered career outcomes centers on couples and rarely examines the reason for the move. The implicit assumption is usually that households migrate in response to job opportunities. Based on a two-year panel from the Current Population Survey, this article uses stated reasons for geographic mobility to compare earnings outcomes among job migrants, family migrants, and quality-of-life migrants by gender and family status. We further assess the impact of migration on couples’ internal household economy. The effects of job-related moves that we find are reduced substantially in the fixed-effects models, indicating strong selection effects. Married women who moved for family reasons experience significant and substantial earnings declines. Consistent with conventional models of migration, we find that household earnings and income and gender specialization increase following job migration. Married women who are secondary earners have increased odds of reducing their labor supply following migration for job or family reasons. However, we also find that migrating women who contributed as equals to the household economy before the move are no more likely than nonmigrant women to exit work or to work part-time. Equal breadwinner status may protect women from becoming tied movers.     

Migration, Household Configurations, and the Well-Being of Adolescent Orphans in Rwanda

This study uses data from the 2002 Rwandan census to situate the discourse on migration and orphan well-being within the context of the household. According to its findings, migrant orphans are less likely than non-migrant orphans to live in households with less favorable structural characteristics such as single-parent households. Significant differences are also found in the implied gains to living standards and schooling associated with migration among paternal, maternal, and double-orphans. However, the higher living standards and schooling attainment of orphan migrants relative to their non-migrant counterparts disappear within child-headed household contexts. More generally, the results indicate that the higher living standards of migrant orphans are in part driven by the fact that they mostly live in households with migrant household-heads or migrant spouses. Yet the analysis also suggests that orphans living within these contexts experience higher levels of intra-household discrimination in investments in their schooling, relative to their orphan counterparts who live in non-migrant households.     

Kidnap risks and migration: evidence from Colombia

Using a unique data set from the major Colombian cities collected between 2000–2003 and with information on more than 12,000 households, this paper studies the relationship between the kidnap risk a household faces with its migration decisions. We find evidence that exposure to such risk induces households to react sending some of their members to an international destination but not necessarily to a domestic one. Estimates are robust to the inclusion of several household characteristics usual in the migration literature, other crime risks, reported feelings of insecurity of the household, and an alternative measure of kidnap risk.     

Guestworker programs: Evidence from Europe and the United States and some implications for U.S. policy

Mounting concern in the United States over increased illegal migration from Mexico during the past decade has generated a heated policy debate and led to a number of proposals as to how the U.S. government should deal with the problem. Among these has been a call for a temporary worker program similar to the U.S.-sponsored Bracero Program (1942–1964) in which over 4 million Mexican workers were recruited to perform temporary agricultural labor in the southwestern United States. This article considers the implications of such a program by examining the social and economic effects of previous guestworker programs in the United States and western Europe from the perspective of both sending and receiving societies. Particular attention is paid to the efficacy of these programs in promoting temporary as opposed to long-term immigration of foreign workers as well as their developmental impact on sending countries.Now at 2405 Rayburn House Office Building, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington DC 20515.     

农民工收入地域差异对留守老人养老保障的影响

西部农民工选择到经济发达的东部城市务工以期获得理想的收入．用以改善家庭生活。然而就业地域的不同选择所引致的收入反差，使农民工不得不考虑其选择务工地区的距离和自身的成本。文章通过对以广东、安徽、甘肃三省为代表的在东、中、西三地区务工农民工收入的比较研究。结果表明西部地区农民工为获得理想的高收入而选择东部城市务工，实际中却是在东部城市务工收入要低于在中、西部城市的收入。并重点对这一困境如何对留守老人养老造成影响进行分析。     

Fertility and Financial Development in South Asia

The paper empirically examines old-age security hypothesis to explain fertility rates in South Asia. Panel data is used for the period 1972–2013 for seven South Asian countries which include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The estimated results reveal that in South Asia fertility rate decreases with the increase in financial development. Thus, the findings support old-age security hypothesis that parents use children as financial instruments to secure their old age. This paper validates the theory that the availability of alternative financial tools reduces the incentives of households to have large offspring. Infant mortality is also shown an important factor for high fertility rate in South Asia. This implies that households cover their risk from losing children by producing more children. The results also reveal that fertility rate decreases with the increase in per capita income, which implies that households treat children as inferior good in this region. In other words, households prefer quality of children over quantity of children when their income level increases. The results have also shown that fertility decreases with the increase in education, urbanization, agriculture productivity and industrialization. The study has some important policy implications.     

劳动力流动:中国农村收入增长的新因素

劳动力流出究竟会促进还是削弱当地的发展是 1 990年代国内外学术界争论的一个焦点。本文运用中国 2 0 0 0年普查数据以及分县的时间序列数据 ,考察了人口流动趋势及其对当地劳动力和农村收入增长的影响。结果显示 ,1 990年代的大量劳动力流出对粮食生产影响并不显著 ,输出地的肉类产品反而有了较快的增长 ,劳动力流动已成为不发达地区农村收入新的增长点 ,正逐步发挥其消除贫困制约地区差距的效应。     

Acomparison between Northern and Southern blacks residing in the North

Differences between Southern and non-Southern blacks living in the North and West are considered for a wide variety of attributes such as employment, occupation, income, marital stability, and offspring's performance in school. Migrant blacks have generally more favorable rates than their Northern- and Western-born compatriots after standard domographic controls are applied to an unusually detailed set of cross-tabulations based on the One-Percent Sample Tapes for 1960. Perhaps the sharpest gap exists with respect to marital conditions; Southern blacks of both sexes are more likely to marry and, among those ever married, live more frequently with their spouses. Some of the results reported by earlier investigators require considerable modification; For example, the fact that Northern black men are less often at work than migrants has led to speculations about regional differences in work orientation among blacks, but a detailed analysis of labor force activity indicates this pattern does not hold for women. Likewise, the migrant income advantage is found to vary by education such that it is confined to those with low educational attainment. The use of sample tapes permits a novel analysis of differences between Northern-born blacks classified by whether they are second or at least third generation residents of the North (children of Southern- or Northern-born parents, respectively). For the attribute measured, school performance, the gap is essentially nil. Finally, an alternative is suggested to the existing causal interpretations of North-South gaps among black residents of the North. Reconsidered in particular are the higher labor force rates of migrant men and their more frequent employment in blue collar jobs;