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

□ Migration Costs ORemittances

Figure 1: Migration costs and remittances across types of migration (averages, in Taka)

table 3

Percentage of remitting migrants

Table 4 shows some farm household characteristics across types of migration.

In general, households with international migrants tend to be the largest²¹ and wealthier, with
the highest amount of land owned (also per adult equivalent - that is to say, controlling for
households size does not change the strength of the correspondence), the highest amount of
land operated, the lowest incidence of poverty and the highest total gross income²². The
opposite can be said for households who have temporary migrants among their members,
namely they seem to be the worst-off with respect to all indicators. Households with no-
migrants, instead, appear more engaged than the others in such ‘diversified’ activities
different from migration as cattle and off-farm activities. Though, they are poorer in terms of
land and total income than households with international migrants.

²¹ It should be noted that household size may be endogenous, in that affected by the (successful) migration
process, but there is little literature on the impact of migration on fertility in source households.

²² The correlation between gross household income and land owned is 52%, which is not surprisingly high.

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