Chapter 13 Internal migration in developing countries

This chapter reviews some of the principal contributions addressing three spheres related to migration: theory, empirical evidence and policy experience, focusing on the more recent literature. The chapter discusses the causes of migration-earnings opportunities and job search, information and financing, family strategies and the contextual setting, and displaced persons; and the economic consequences of internal migrationthe direct and indirect effects of rural emigration on rural production, the overall effects on national product in the light of various market pathologies, and the consequences for income inequality. The understanding of factors determining the urban component of those earnings differentials remains poor. Efficiency wage stories now dominate the world of theory, but little evidence has been compiled either in favor of or in contradiction of these ideas. But, there are major policy areas, touching more or less directly upon migration, where almost no systematic empirical knowledge has yet been amassed.