Self-Employment and Migration
There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poo...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/981521568303685878/Self-Employment-and-Migration http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32414 |
| Summary: | There is a widespread policy view that a
lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for
migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend
more on creating these opportunities to reduce migration.
Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced
with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities
for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But
empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and
economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed
may be more likely to migrate. This paper puts together
panel surveys from eight countries to descriptively examine
the relationship between migration and self-employment,
finding that the self-employed are indeed less likely to
migrate than wage workers or the unemployed. The paper then
analyzes seven randomized experiments that increased
self-employment, and finds that their causal impacts on
migration are negative on average, but often small in magnitude. |
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