Abstract
Rural development initiatives across the developing world are designed to improve community well-being and livelihoods. However they may also have unforeseen consequences, in some cases placing further demands on stretched public services. In this paper we use data from a longitudinal study of five Ethiopian villages to investigate the impact of a recent rural development initiative, installing village-level water taps, on rural to urban migration of young adults. Our previous research has identified that tap stands dramatically reduced child mortality, but were also associated with increased fertility. We demonstrate that the installation of taps is associated with increased rural-urban migration of young adults (15–30 years) over a 15 year period (15.5% migrate out, n = 1912 from 1280 rural households). Young adults with access to this rural development intervention had three times the relative risk of migrating to urban centres compared to those without the development. We also identify that family dynamics, specifically sibling competition for limited household resources (e.g. food, heritable land and marriage opportunities), are key to understanding the timing of out-migration. Birth of a younger sibling doubled the odds of out-migration and starting married life reduced it. Rural out-migration appears to be a response to increasing rural resource scarcity, principally competition for agricultural land. Strategies for livelihood diversification include education and off-farm casual wage-labour. However, jobs and services are limited in urban centres, few migrants send large cash remittances back to their families, and most return to their villages within one year without advanced qualifications. One benefit for returning migrants may be through enhanced social prestige and mate-acquisition on return to rural areas. These findings have wide implications for current understanding of the processes which initiate rural-to-urban migration and transitions to low fertility, as well as for the design and implementation of development intervention across the rural and urban developing world.
Highlights
For the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population lives in urban areas
A young adult with access to taps was three times more likely to migrate to an urban centre compared to a young adult without access to taps in any given season (Table 2; access to taps odds ratio [OR] = 2.92, p =,0.05)
The positive effects of the development initiative on risk of out-migration increased with age, indicating odds of out-migration did not diminish over time with exposure to the intervention
Summary
For the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population lives in urban areas. Over 90 percent of urbanization is taking place in the developing world, and is concentrated among young adults (aged 15–30 years) in Africa and Asia, the result of rapid population growth occurring during the mid twentieth century [1,2]. Cities generate jobs and income, deliver education, health care and other services more efficiently than less densely settled areas, because of their advantages of scale and proximity [3]. In less developed countries such as Ethiopia, rapid urbanization is increasingly concentrating poverty, placing strain on infrastructure and already stretched public services in towns and cities [4,5,6]. A key challenge for the century is managing the scale and pace of urbanization, in countries which have fewer resources and slower rates of economic growth [7,8]
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