Deciphering the Relationship Between Internal Migration and Regional Disparities in Tunisia

This study analyses the key factors that shape inter-governorates migration in Tunisia, focusing mainly on the role of demographic, geographical and socio-economic factors in driving migration flows. It uses basic and extended gravity models, as well as Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood model for modeling migration data to assess the relative importance of distance, job market characteristics and economic variables. The main findings reveal that inter-governorate migrations in Tunisia are affected by high population size at the origin and destination locations, high unemployment rate at the origin and low unemployment rate at the destination. The results suggest also that migration flows are negatively affected by high job vacancies and the annual average per capita household expenditure at the origin.