Essays on migration

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1857564 (Table of Contents)

This dissertation includes two chapters. In the first chapter, we examine the impacts of remittances on various household outcomes including: child school attendance and child illiteracy, child labor, adult labor and household well-being. We use IV estimation technique to account for the endogeneity of remittances. We find evidence of a significant positive impact of remittances on school attendance of 6- to 19-years-old boys and of 6- to 14-years-old girls. Receiving remittances leads to a lower school retention for 15- to 19-years-old girls. Girls of ages 6-to-14 from recipient households are more likely to be literate. Children aged 15 to 19 in recipient households are significantly less likely to supply labor. Adult labor supply results are in favor of income effect hypothesis. Lastly, recipient households are shown to be relatively better-off with respect to welfare compared to non-recipients. In the second chapter, we estimate the determinants of 28-54-years-old male work migrants’ location choices among 67 provinces of Turkey. The results show that internal migrants respond to differences in migrant networks, labor market and population attributes between locations while deciding on the migration destination. Distance from the source province is shown to be a significant deterrent of immigrant’s location choice. Migrants are drawn to cities in which their former compatriots are highly concentrated. Migrants are more likely to move to cities which have relatively better economic conditions as captured by lower unemployment rate and to cities with larger populations that has larger economic activity.