Migration amongst the Batswana
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Citation
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
The hypothesis presented in Todaro (1969), that the likelihood of finding
work in town influences the rate of rural-urban migration, now enjoys the
status of a received doctrine. Assuming potential migrants indeed respond to
this employment probability, the model of Harris and Todaro (1970)
demonstrates that, in certain parametric ranges, urban job creation may
actually exacerbate unemployment and even reduce national product. This
result has had considerable influence on policy formulation in LDC, by
emphasizing that, in the urban sector, the social opportunity cost of labor
may not be insignificant despite burgeoning unemployment.
Yet neither the Todaro hypothesis nor prevalence of the Harris-Todaro
parametric range has been adequately, empirically explored. Many estimates of
macro migration equations do exist, normally relating the proportion of
population migrating to average wages in differing locations and occasionally
to average population characteristics. But in Lucas (1975), I show that the
popular nonlinear specification of such macro functions may well display
serious specification error bias; a nonlinear function of the aggregate
variables is not simply the average of underlying micro migration decisions
related to the disaggregated variables. Thus, although a few estimates of
macro migration equations have also incorporated average unemployment rates,
usually in developed country contexts and with mixed results, these analyses
are at best very circumscribed tests of the Todaro and Harris-Todaro theories. [TRUNCATED]
Description
African Studies Center Working Paper No. 70
License
Copyright © 1983, by the author.