Individual Migration and Household Incomes
Working Paper 22326
DOI 10.3386/w22326
Issue Date
We estimate the returns to internal migration in South Africa. These appear to be the first nationally representative estimates of the return to migration for any African country-- a somewhat surprising claim for a literature that's over 60 years old. We develop a framework to analyze individual migration in the context of income pooling within endogenously formed households. We apply this framework to estimate the return to migration from the perspective of the migrant (as is typically done) as well as from the perspectives of the sending and receiving households.