International Migration and Household Well-Being : Evidence from Uzbekistan
As one of the most pivotal ways that labor markets adjust to changing economic conditions, international migration is never far from the center of the national discussion in Uzbekistan. This paper summarizes the relationship between recent internat...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/615721561125387061/International-Migration-and-Household-Well-Being-Evidence-from-Uzbekistan http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31975 |
| Summary: | As one of the most pivotal ways that
labor markets adjust to changing economic conditions,
international migration is never far from the center of the
national discussion in Uzbekistan. This paper summarizes the
relationship between recent international migration trends
and household well-being using a combination of
administrative records and unique panel survey data from the
Listening to the Citizens of Uzbekistan study. The panel
design provides data on changes in well-being leading up to
and following a migrants' departure. This feature
enables analysis that controls for unobserved time-invariant
respondent and location characteristics. The findings show
that weak local labor markets drive labor migration from
Uzbekistan. Beginning to consider migration is associated
with low life satisfaction, job loss, and unemployment. In
contrast, actually migrating is associated with a remarkable
improvement in labor market outcomes, alongside strong
recovery in subjective and monetary measures of household
welfare. The results further show that current migrants are
more likely to send remittance payments when household
members have deteriorating life satisfaction and/or
subjective reports of worsening economic conditions at home.
In the absence of remittance income, the poverty rate in
Uzbekistan (measured at $3.2/day purchasing power parity)
would be expected to rise from 9.6 to 16.8 percent, or to
about 12.2 percent assuming (implausibly) that all current
migrants were to find formal employment at the local
prevailing median wage. |
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