Rural-urban migration in economic development
Bhattacharya, P.C.
Journal of Economic Surveys 7(3): 243-281
1993
ISSN/ISBN: 0950-0804 PMID: 12345177 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6419.1993.tb00167.xDocument Number: 308633
This paper provides a review of the theoretical literature on rural-urban migration in contemporary LDCs. It begins with a brief discussion of the Lewis model before going on to look at the Todaro and the Harris-Todaro models, and the large literature they have spawned. The question of job search in the context of migration and the role of family members in migration decisions are also considered. The paper than takes a closer look at the informal sector and sets out alternative migration functions to the ones usually employed in the literature. The paper concludes with a brief note on some of the important implications arising from the study and argues that 'urban bias', if it ever existed in policy-making, has had little or no impact on the movement of people from the villages to the urban centres.