Migration occupies an uncomfortable position in policy debates. On the one hand, national governments often seek to control and restrict immigration, citing at best very weak evidence on the negative impacts of immigrant workers on wages and employment and access to services, security issues and integration concerns, while most economist would argue that the free movement of labour within and across countries is an important factor in boosting economic productivity, lowering inequality and reducing poverty, and furthermore that migration is a consequence of rising standards of living.
This paper explores the drivers of African migration drawing on micro data from comparable household surveys of rural households conducted in Ghana, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe between 2013 and 2015, including a short longitudinal data set for Ghana which tracks households over time between 2013 and 2015. The surveys are described in detail in the annex but it is worth flagging two points about the surveys here.
