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- Title
INSTABILITY IN RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION.
- Authors
Day, Richard H.; Dasgupta, Sudipto; Datta, Samar K.; Nugent, Jeffrey B.
- Abstract
Rural urban migration in the real world will be influenced by many variables that are omitted from the present analysis. Moreover, the values of parameters that are held fixed (capital, population, productivity) will all change over time in response to investment, technological change and demographic forces. Nonetheless, the analysis and the examples clearly indicate the possible complexity of rural urban movements. In particular, they suggest that in response to broader dynamics in the economy a point in the parameter space (Figs. 2a,b) might move from the unstable regime with low r to a stable regime with increasing f and then, as changes (exogenous to the present model) continue, back into the unstable regime with high r. In such a world rural-urban migration might fluctuate for a time and then approach an upward trend with unstable fluctuations re-emerging at an advanced stage of development. In the real world such development would very likely trigger measures intended to counteract instabilities, thus adding another parametric change to the process of market adjustment. As policymakers faced with the phenomenon of reverse migration consider instruments for this purpose their counterparts in countries still experiencing forward migration may want to anticipate a possible need to do the same. Evidently reverse migration and instability are not exclusively characteristics of countries at low levels of development; they can also occur at high levels of development. One may conjecture that rapid enough improvements in technology can destabilise labour market adjustments. The policy issues concerning reverse migration may, therefore, be intrinsic to 'successful' technological advances. Obviously, the whole issue of labour market stability needs further study using models which include more of the relevant variables and forces than the Harris--Todaro framework provides. Even within its narrow confines, however, the model and its possibilities for instabilit...
- Subjects
RURAL-urban migration; TECHNOLOGICAL innovations
- Publication
Economic Journal, 1987, Vol 97, Issue 388, p940
- ISSN
0013-0133
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2233081