Stay or leave Ethiopia: analysing migration as households’ two-stage decision

ABSTRACT

This study analyses the main determinants of migration in order to guide future policy interventions in Ethiopia. We use a double-hurdle model for observing a sample of 4,946 households by a representative survey data. The findings show that the likelihood of migration mainly depends on socio-economic factors while not affected by regional origin. The determinants related to household heads and members have strong impacts, thus confirming that the decision is driven by these actors instead of being a purely individual choice. In addition, the findings confirm that migration is mainly linked to rural areas. Educational policies have a decisive impact on the household choice to let someone migrate. Literacy is the strongest determinant of migration choice, with the highest impact; agricultural policies have a smaller impact on the decision to migrate rather than other policies have.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration determinants
• households
• internal policies
• sub-saharan Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to the Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration (UN, 1998) an international migrant is the one who changes his country of habitual residence for at least 12 months (long-term migrations) or shifting from more than 3 to less than 12 months (short-term migration).