Migration, poverty, and development

It is theoretically argued that there is a strong linkage between migration and poverty. Migration can be treated as an alternative to improve individuals’ welfare and to minimize the risk of being prone to poverty. Many studies have found that migrants on the average better than non-migrants. However little is known to what extent that migration process can improve migrants’ welfare and to avoided poverty. This study wants to shed lights on that issue.

The empirical findings reveal the amount of wage received after migration is higher compared to prior to migration. Health and educational attainment plays a crucial role in determining the amount of wage received. In addition, as it is expected, formal sector offer higher increase in wage than informal sector. In contrast, the effect of gender disparity on wage is gradually decreasing over the years. The greater wage received by migrants’ worker after migration taken place has improved their welfare and put them far from poverty. The higher wage received by migrants’ worker could be translating into the benefit from migration could be utilized to improved their human capital investment. In addition, the wage surplus potentially can be used to assist new migrants.

Brazil has experienced an economic development and achieved in 2012 the sixth position in the World economy ranking. As a consequence of economic growth, the Federal Government has invested in social policies that attempt to mitigate extreme poverty in the country. Policies such as "Bolsa Família", "Light for All" and "PAC - Growth Acceleration Plan" were proposed to increase family income and infrastructure, especially in urban areas. However, several Brazilian cities, such as the Amazonian ones, which have grown since 1980 considering the Region an urbanized forest, reproduce structural problems. According to 2010 Census, the urban population in the region grew by 36.6% between 1980 and 1991, 30.3% between 1991 and 2000, and 18.8% from 2000 to 2010. In 2010, 93.3% of the Brazilian Amazon cities were considered small in terms of population (less than 50,000 inhabitants), and concentrated 39% of the total urban population of the region. In this sense, we intend to discuss in this paper the situation of urban space in the Brazilian Amazon in terms of infrastructure and socio-economic conditions, and the conditions of sustainability, using the city of Ponta de Pedras, located in Para State, as an example.

Individual-level studies of the effects of economic fluctuations and political instability on migration are scarce and most focus on international migration. Implications of economic and political instability for internal migration, a massive phenomenon throughout the world, have not been well examined. Using recent nationally representative survey data from Kyrgyzstan, we look at variations in levels of internal migration and relate them to the economic and political instability in that Central Asian nation in the first decade of this century. Event-history models predicting yearly risks of migration detect no clear association of these risks with episodes of heightened political instability but show a decrease in the risks in response to the strongest economic shock of the observation period. The results also point to some instructive differences across types of area of residence, education, employment, gender, and ethnicity. These findings are interpreted within the context of complex intersections of politics, economy, and culture in this transitional post-Soviet setting.