IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hdr/papers/hdrp-2009-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Migrating Away from a Seasonal Famine: A Randomized Intervention in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Shyamal Chowdhury

    (University of Sydney)

  • Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

    (School of Management at Yale University)

  • Gharad Bryan

    (Yale University)

Abstract

The rural northwestern districts of Bangladesh, home to 10 million people, experience a preharvest seasonal famine, locally known as Monga, with disturbing regularity. Surprisingly, outmigration from the Monga-prone districts is not all that common. This research tests whether migration could play any role in Monga mitigation. We implemented a randomized intervention that provided monetary incentives to individuals in Monga-prone regions to seasonally outmigrate during the pre-harvest season. We experimentally varied the conditionalities attached to the incentives, such as a requirement to form a group and migrate jointly (as opposed to migrating individually), sometimes assigning migration partners and the destination, and varying group size. This paper reports just the first stage results of this randomized intervention project, where we focus on household responsiveness to our incentive offers in terms of their decision to migrate. Our cash and credit incentives had a very large effect on migration propensity: over 40% of those receiving an incentive choose to migrate, whereas only 13% of control households do. This large effect is consistent with the presence of savings or borrowing constraints for these households, since providing information on wages and employment conditions at destinations only has a negligible 2 percentage point impact on the propensity to migrate relative to the control group.

Suggested Citation

  • Shyamal Chowdhury & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Gharad Bryan, 2009. "Migrating Away from a Seasonal Famine: A Randomized Intervention in Bangladesh," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2009-41, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), revised Sep 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:hdr:papers:hdrp-2009-41
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/papers/HDRP_2009_41.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Todaro, Michael P, 1969. "A Model for Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment in Less Developed Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 138-148, March.
    2. Larry A. Sjaastad, 1970. "The Costs and Returns of Human Migration," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Harry W. Richardson (ed.), Regional Economics, chapter 9, pages 115-133, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Stark, Oded & Bloom, David E, 1985. "The New Economics of Labor Migration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 173-178, May.
    4. Carrington, William J & Detragiache, Enrica & Vishwanath, Tara, 1996. "Migration with Endogenous Moving Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 909-930, September.
    5. Beatriz Armendariz & Jonathan Morduch, 2007. "The Economics of Microfinance," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262512017, December.
    6. Stark, Oded & Levhari, David, 1982. "On Migration and Risk in LDCs," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 191-196, October.
    7. Kaivan Munshi, 2003. "Networks in the Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants in the U. S. Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(2), pages 549-599.
    8. Harris, John R & Todaro, Michael P, 1970. "Migration, Unemployment & Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 126-142, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Borrowing constraints and (seasonal) famines
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2010-01-19 21:00:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shahidur R. Khandker & M. A. Baqui Khalily & Hussain A. Samad, 2012. "Seasonal Hunger and Its Mitigation in North-West Bangladesh," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(12), pages 1750-1764, December.
    2. Maxmillan Martin & Yi hyun Kang & Motasim Billah & Tasneem Siddiqui & Richard Black & Dominic Kniveton, 2017. "Climate-influenced migration in Bangladesh: The need for a policy realignment," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35, pages 357-379, October.
    3. Aker, Jenny C. & Clemens, Michael A. & Ksoll, Christopher, 2011. "Mobiles and mobility: The Effect of Mobile Phones on Migration in Niger," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Berlin 2011 2, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    4. Khandker, Shahidur R., 2012. "Seasonality of income and poverty in Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 244-256.
    5. Jonathan Colmer, 2013. "Climate Variability, Child Labour and Schooling: Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margin," GRI Working Papers 132, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    6. Benjamin Marx & Thomas Stoker & Tavneet Suri, 2013. "The Economics of Slums in the Developing World," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 187-210, Fall.
    7. Khandker, Shahidur R. & Khaleque, M. Abdul & Samad, Hussain A., 2011. "Can social safety nets alleviate seasonal deprivation ? evidence from northwest Bangladesh," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5865, The World Bank.
    8. Silva, Cinthya & Pino, Gabriel, 2024. "Financial inclusion and roof quality: Satellite evidence from Chilean slums," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tineke Fokkema & Eralba Cela & Elena Ambrosetti, 2013. "Giving from the Heart or from the Ego? Motives behind Remittances of the Second Generation in Europe," International Migration Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 539-572, September.
    2. Cristina Procházková Ilinitchi, 2010. "Selected Migration Theories and their Importance on Drawing Migration Policies [Vybrané teorie migrace a jejich význam při vytváření migračních politik]," Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2010(6), pages 3-26.
    3. Arland Thornton & Prem Bhandari & Jeffrey Swindle & Nathalie Williams & Linda Young-DeMarco & Cathy Sun & Christina Hughes, 2020. "Fatalistic Beliefs and Migration Behaviors: A Study of Ideational Demography in Nepal," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(4), pages 643-670, August.
    4. Hagen-Zanker, Jessica, 2008. "Why do people migrate? A review of the theoretical literature," MPRA Paper 28197, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Partha Deb & Papa Seck, 2009. "Internal Migration, Selection Bias and Human Development: Evidence from Indonesia and Mexico," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2009-31, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), revised Jul 2009.
    6. Emmanuel Apergis & Nicholas Apergis, 2022. "Reverse Immigration Effects for Expatriates in Oman During the COVID-19 Pandemic Shock," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 28(1), pages 19-37, May.
    7. Guy Stecklov & Paul Winters & Marco Stampini & Benjamin Davis, 2003. "Can Public Transfers Reduce Mexican Migration? A study based on randomized experimental data," Working Papers 03-16, Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA).
    8. Hagen-Zanker, Jessica, 2010. "Modest expectations: Causes and effects of migration on migrant households in source countries," MPRA Paper 29507, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ekaterina Sprenger, 2013. "The Determinants of International Migration in the European Union: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers 325, Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
    10. Goldbach, Carina & Schlüter, Achim, 2018. "Risk aversion, time preferences, and out-migration. Experimental evidence from Ghana and Indonesia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 132-148.
    11. Paul Winters & Alain de Janvry & Elisabeth Sadoulet, 2001. "Family and Community Networks in Mexico-U.S. Migration," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(1), pages 159-184.
    12. Lall, Somik V. & Selod, Harris & Shalizi, Zmarak, 2006. "Rural-urban migration in developing countries : a survey of theoretical predictions and empirical findings," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3915, The World Bank.
    13. Jean-Louis Arcand & Linguère M'Baye, 2011. "Braving the waves: The economics of clandestine migration from Africa," CERDI Working papers halshs-00575606, HAL.
    14. Shreya Nupur & Meghna Dutta, 2024. "Determinants of Migration from Poor Households in India: An Empirical Investigation," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 67(3), pages 829-847, September.
    15. Eva-Maria Egger & Julie Litchfield, 2019. "Following in their footsteps: an analysis of the impact of successive migration on rural household welfare in Ghana," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 9(1), pages 1-22, December.
    16. McKenzie, David J., 2006. "A profile of the world's young developing country migrants," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4021, The World Bank.
    17. Farré, Lídia & Fasani, Francesco, 2013. "Media exposure and internal migration — Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 48-61.
    18. Elena Vitalievna, Lebedeva, 2007. "Determinants of International Migration and Remittances," MPRA Paper 104789, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2007.
    19. Gröger, André, 2021. "Easy come, easy go? Economic shocks, labor migration and the family left behind," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    20. Sergio Vergalli, 2008. "The Role of Community in Migration Dynamics," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(3), pages 547-567, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monga; famine; Bangladesh; migration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • R2 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hdr:papers:hdrp-2009-41. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: HDRO/UNDP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hdundus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.