The EconomistNovember 16th 2019 Special reportMigration 112
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hen a votercasts a ballot, his choice is unlikely to affect his
life. If he votes with his feet, there is a good chance he will
change his life dramatically, observes Ilya Somin of George Mason
University, author of a forthcoming book, “Free to Move”. Consider
Edinson Infante, a Venezuelan who makes handbags out of bank-
notes, folded and glued together. A single lipstick placed in one of
his bags is worth far more than the stack of Bolivars from which it
was made. That is why Mr Infante emigrated.
He could not make a living in Venezuela, a socialist dictator-
ship. So he moved to Colombia, the reasonably well-run country
next door, where he sells his art on the streets. He now earns
enough to pay rent, eat properly and send groceries home to his
mother. He says he feels free in Colombia. He can stroll without
feeling scared, and afford occasional treats like caramel sweets.
Since 2014, 4.6m Venezuelans have voted with their feet againstThe greatest liberty
Moving lets people choose the kind of society they live inVoting with your feetcause most migrant workers are men, the
places where they cluster have wildly un-
balanced sex ratios, making them even
more dangerous for women.
Babu Gamar, a farmer in Gujarat, says
that half the men in his village go away to
work. But “young women can’t go—they
might be abused,” he says. Virjibhai Gamar,
a neighbour, concurs. Every month he goes
with his brothers to work on building sites.
Their wives and sisters do not join them.
The distorted sex ratio of Indian mi-
grants helps demographers track trends
that would otherwise be hard to measure.
In areas that send a lot of migrants to cities,
the working-age population is heavily fe-
male, but the elderly population is not,
notes Mr Tumbe. That implies that rural
migrants eventually go back home. Many
scrimp in the city, often sleeping four to a
room, so they can buy land in their village.
In “Good Economics for Hard Times”,
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of
the winners of this year’s Nobel prize for
economics, argue that most people who
would benefit from moving stay put, for
three reasons. They value the familiar; they
overestimate the risks of moving; and they do not know anyone or
have anywhere to stay in the place they could go.
Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo suggest giving poor people small
amounts of cash and some information. A charity in northern Ban-
gladesh tried this. Some villagers were randomly selected and told
how much higher wages were in a city. Others were given the same
information plus $11.50 in cash—roughly the cost of a bus fare and
two days’ food—but only if they went to work in the city.
The villagers who were given information only were no likelier
to migrate. But the combination of cash and nudge prompted 22%
of households who would not otherwise have sent out a migrant to
do so. And the families who sent out a migrant saw their daily in-
take of calories shoot up from 1,400 a head to 2,200; that is, from
the edge of starvation to tolerable comfort. Mobility fills bellies.
In rich countries internal migration is seldom a matter of life or
death. But many people could earn more if they moved from stag-
nant towns to thriving ones. Hull’s jobless could easily find work
in London. Alas, they will struggle to find a place to live. Rents are
extortionate in the cities people most want to move to. nimbys
block any structure that might mar their view. Red tape can make
property several times more expensive than it need be, forcing po-
tential migrants to stay where rents are cheap. Americans are bare-
ly half as likely to move to a different county as they were in the
1950s. And this means their talents are often wasted. Chang-Tai
Hsieh of the University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley estimate that artificial restrictions
on housing supply knocked 36% off America’s aggregate gdp
growth between 1964 and 2009.
Because moving disrupts a previous way of life, it forces the
mover to try new things. Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo describe a natu-
ral experiment that took place when a volcanic eruption in 1973 de-
stroyed a third of the houses on the Westaman islands, off the
coast of Iceland. The lava struck randomly. Before the eruption,
there was no significant difference between the people who lost
homes and those who did not. But afterwards, the ones whose
homes were destroyed were more likely to leave the islands, by
42% to 26%. (They were compensated for their loss, but did not
have to spend the money on rebuilding their old home.)Researchers traced the islanders’ progress. They found that, for
those who were under 25 at the time of the eruption, losing a house
led to large material gains. “By 2014 those whose (parental) houses
were destroyed earned over $3,000 per year more than those
whose (parental) houses were not destroyed.” The gains came
from moving: those who upped sticks made $25,000 a year more
than those who did not. They were more likely to go to college, and
to find a job that matched their intellect and aptitude, rather than
following the islands’ default career of catching fish and getting
by. Generations of parents have threatened to “light a fire” under
their shiftless offspring. It turns out that’s not a bad idea. 7Worth the squeeze