Study on the Household Migration Patterns in Rural Areas

摘要

Many households in developing countries allocate their labor resources between rural and urban areas to diversify risks and maximize income. One such strategy would be for a husband in a rural area to migrate to an urban area while his wife and family remain in the rural area without any chance of joining the migrant husband in the urban area. The family maintains a rural home and an urban home. This paper explores possible determinants of this type of migration on the basis of the Von-NeumannMorgenstern expected-utility function.Nontrivial findings suggest that such migratory behavior may be motivated by agglomeration effects of household size in the rural area,an increase in remittance by the migrant husband to his rural family,a relatively low education for the husband,and a high urban cost of living.