Unequal Journeys: Unpacking the Differential Impact of Development on Internal Migration across Educational Groups

Dorothee Beckendorff, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (epfl-eth)
Wenxiu Du, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (epfl-eth)
Mathias Lerch, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (epfl-eth)

This study examines how internal migration responds to development drivers across educational groups in cities of the Global South. Internal migration plays a critical role in distributing human capital but the knowledge about city level effects is limited. Migrants seeking better education or job opportunities, move between rural and urban areas or between urban centers, leading to overcrowding in cities, depopulation of rural areas, and brain drain from less developed regions, exacerbating economic disparities between regions. To better understand the urban gradients of migration by education over the development process, we use geospatial and census data to unionize administrative units into Functional Urban Areas (FUAs), enabling a sub-national examination of migration at the city level across 30 developing countries including 600 FUAs. We apply Poisson regression models to explore how the relationship between development drivers and migration varies by education level and tiers of the urban hierarchy. Initial results show that most pronounced differences in outmigration occur among highly skilled individuals, with university-educated people leaving less developed cities but remaining in more developed ones as living standards rise. Lower-educated individuals are more likely to migrate out of wealthier cities. Overall migration patterns vary significantly across city tiers and educational groups.

Keywords: Internal Migration and Urbanization, Population and Development, Geo-referenced/geo-coded data, Census data

See extended abstract.