RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION AND SELF-SELECTION IN TUNISIA

This article presents a model of returns to rural-urban migration accounting for self-selection of migrants using survey data from Tunisia. Of particular interest in this research is the sign and significance of the selectivity terms in the mover and the stayer group. The model focuses on the importance of human capital investment incentives and personal characteristics. This article is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the Tunisian context. Section 3 describes a simple model of migrant behavior in which the decision to migrate, viewed in the context of investment in human capital, results as the solution to an optimal control problem. Section 4 provides details of a simultaneous equation model, which incorporates the decision to migrate, returns to migration, and self-selection. The results of the research lead to the conclusion that by purely statistical assessment the expected monetary gain effect is significantly different from zero. Although by economic considerations, it is small. This low effect is a result of the omission of other relevant variables from the analysis of rural-urban migration in Tunisia. In the migration-earning equations the selectivity variable is not significant, whereas there is a strong evidence of positive self-selection in the earnings of nonmigrants.