Migration and Technological Change in Rural Households: Complements or Substitutes?

Overall, there are 1241 migrants in the sample distributed as follows with the following
characteristics (Table 2):

Across different categories of migration, sample migrants are predominately men, young
(around 30 years old) moving primarily to earn more money or find a job. What differs across
types of migration is the educational level of migrants, clearly higher in the case of permanent
and international migration, and in the latter cases the percentage of single migrants is also
higher than in case of temporary migration²⁰. Eventually, international migration seems the
most recent type of moving, as sample migrants left on average around 1991, while
permanent migration started earlier and temporary migration more than eight years before
1995.

Figure 1 shows the sample average amounts of costs of moving and remittances sent back
home, by different categories of migration. Migration costs as well as remittances are directly
asked to the survey respondent, and they refer to initial costs sustained by the household to
send out a migrant (i.e. costs of travel, visa, recruiting agency etc) and the amount of money
they receive from her/him.

It is clearly evident the increase in net-returns across typologies of migration, with
international migration yielding the highest level of costs and remittances. Moreover, Tables 3
shows the percentage of migrants remitting, which is very high in all categories, suggesting a
high correspondence between migration and remittances sent back home.

²⁰ Since the age of migrants is not very different, the single status of migrants can be considered as a ‘cost’ of
permanent and international migration.

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