Abstract
PurposeUsing a recently compiled dataset on migration and remittances in Ghana, the purpose of this paper is to estimate the determinants of an individual's likelihood to be an internal migrant and the relationship between internal migration and welfare.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses treatment regression techniques to assess the characteristics of Ghanaian migrants, the determinants of migration, and its impact on household welfare.FindingsThe paper finds that the likelihood to migrate is determined by a combination of individual (pull) and community‐level (push) characteristics. The probability of migration is higher for younger and more educated individuals, but communities with higher levels of literacy, higher rates of subsidized medical care, and better access to water and sanitation are less likely to produce migrants. It is found that households with migrants tend to be better off than similar households without migrants, even after controlling for the fact that households with migrants are a non‐random sample of Ghanaians. However, the positive relationship is only true for households with at least one migrant in urban areas.Research limitations/implicationsClearly, if the authors had access to panel data, they would have been able to do something very nice and clean (on both theoretical and econometric grounds).Originality/valueThis paper adds to the Ghana migration literature by offering a novel empirical assessment of the characteristics of Ghanaian migrants, the determinants of migration, and its impact on household welfare by drawing on a recently‐assembled, nationally‐representative sample of Ghanaian households.
Highlights
Migration is very common in Ghana, with at least one migrant in more than 43 percent of all households in 2005/06
The analysis in this paper is undertaken with a nationally-representative sample of 4,000 Ghanaian households, taken from the 8,687 households which participated in the 2005/06 round of Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 5). 13 households were dropped due to insufficient data, resulting in the final sample of 3,987 households
Any potential increase in spatial inequality due to internal migration can hardly be considered a worsening in inequality because it is an outcome of a welfaremaximizing decision by individuals and/or households
Summary
Migration is very common in Ghana, with at least one migrant in more than 43 percent of all households in 2005/06. Using data from the 1991/92 and 1998/99 rounds of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS), Litchfield and Waddington (2003) found that migrants have a higher standard of living than non-migrants. Boakye-Yiadom (2008), using data from the 1998/99 round of GLSS (GLLS 4), found that, some rural-urban migrants experienced welfare losses, on average, ruralurban migration significantly enhanced the welfare of internal migrants. This paper adds to the Ghana migration literature summarized above by offering a novel empirical assessment of the characteristics of Ghanaian migrants, the determinants of migration, and its impact on household welfare by drawing on a recently-assembled, nationally-representative sample of Ghanaian households. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the dataset and provides some descriptive statistics on Ghanaian migrants, Section 3 presents an analysis of migration determinants, Section 4 assesses the impact of migration on welfare, and Section 5 concludes
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