Understanding Internal Migration to Urban Areas: Evidence from Censuses and Surveys from the Developing World

zhen liu, Zhejiang University
Deborah L. Balk, CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR)
Mark Montgomery, Stony Brook University, State University of New York (SUNY)

Using hundreds of millions of records from 134 census microdata from the International Integrated Public Use Mirodata Samples (IPUMS-I) and 185 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 84 developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America collected from 1970s to 2018, this paper seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of urban in-migration patterns by age, gender as well as its correlation with urbanization levels at both the subnational and national level. The preliminary results suggest that although censuses and surveys often produce different levels of urban in- migration estimates, they constantly show similar patterns of urban in-migration in relation to demographic characteristics such age and gender. Finally, using mixed-effects regression models that controls for subnational and national-level population and economic conditions, as well as varied migration-defining spatial units, this paper also presents empirical evidence on how prevalence of migration to urban areas might change across urbanization stages.

Keywords: Internal Migration and Urbanization, Population and Development, Big data

See paper.