Poster session on Internal migration and urbanization (1)

Household characteristics such as age, size, occupation, socio-economic status, etc. play vital role in deciding the movement of adult members. A study of movement process at the household level is useful for the prediction of future size of the households as well as to study the imbalances in sex-ratio occurred due to such migration. Motivated by the fact that the data related to migration is influenced by the number of the adult members present in household, under certain assumptions some probability models (inflated binomial and beta binomial distributions) have been proposed to describe the migration pattern and it has been applied to the observed distribution of adult migrants from the households among fixed number of adult members present in household. Data have been taken from a survey conducted in the most flooded area of Bihar, India in 2010. Findings reveal that proposed model explains satisfactorily the pattern of rural out migration of Adults from the household. Also we have observed that the risk of migration is increasing with increasing number of adult member in the household.

This paper first develops a structural micro-founded model of aggregate net migration flow to study how migrants choose between multiple locations using multiple criteria. Migration should reduce observed inequality in the criteria. Apart from Bazzi (2012) who develops a micro-founded model of aggregate migration flows (but with a single destination and reason for migrating) to study the barriers to international migration flows, existing theoretical frameworks either cannot handle multiple criteria and locations or lack micro foundation. The model predicts that migration flows will be out of all but the top two ranked regions, most moves will be moving into the top ranked location, but low utility individuals in the best location will move to the second ranked location. The empirical work, which uses 1990-1999 Guangdong annual data and applies this structural model with generalized least squares and weighted least squares, confirms our prediction and finds a high degree of common marginal effects of the criteria among 18 locations but also finds increasing regional inequalities.

This paper compares slums (subnormal clusters) with formal city to identify similarities and differences between these populations. The exercise is done for two Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, both with over 2 million inhabitants. In Rio de Janeiro 22% of population lives in 763 slums while in Belo Horizonte 13% of population lives in 211 slums spread throughout the city territory. The analysis consists of comparing the formal city with slums regarding individual demographic characteristics of the population such as age structure, composition by race / color as well as characteristics of households like access to basic sanitation, including access to potable water and waste disposal. Using data from the 2010 National Demographic Census, the results indicate that, in fact, there is not a great disparity between slums and rest of the city with regard to the differences in attendance to basic services, being this difference was more pronounced with regard to the age structure of the population and social inequalities understood as differences in income and race/color. Finally, some recommendations are made for public policies aimed at the population living in slums.

This study examines the employment characteristics of youth migrants in Nigeria by analyzing the World Bank data on Migration and Remittances Household Surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa (2009). The methodology adopted included both bivariate and multivariate models of migration decision making of the Nigerian youth migrants. Our findings showed that there is a general improvement in the level of education of the migrant youths compared to their counterparts two decades ago or more in the past. With respect to the low level of social and economic development of the country, young people migrate to urban destinations where most employment opportunities can be found, those who are unable to get decent and rewarding jobs lapse into the “discouraged workers”. Also youth migrants with primary and secondary level of education are more represented in self-employment. These categories of youth migrants mostly engaged in vocational jobs, petty trade and any kind of job that requires low skill (informal sector) and are majorly from the south-East geo-political zone of the country. The policy implications of these findings are many. To mention a few, we need policies that will bridge the rural-urban socio-economic divide by improving the social, physical and economic infrastructures across the national landscape.

By the year 2030, 590 million Indians will become urban residents, a figure twice the size of the United States population today. Indian demographers have expressed concern that urbanization process has become concentrated in larger cities. However, preliminary reports from Census 2011 not only point to increased rural-urban migration, but also a shift in rural-urban migration to smaller cities. This paper seeks to understand how rural-urban migrants are faring as urban residents. The analysis stratifies Indian cities in two categories—those with a population of one million or more versus other smaller cities. The findings demonstrate that rural-urban migrants are better-off in smaller sized cities as compared to the million plus cities, indicating that city size is associated with migrants' ability to succeed as urban residents. The paper concludes by discussing possible explanations for this finding and its implications for India's urban future.