Migration and regional convergence: An empirical investigation for Turkey*

The standard growth theory predicts that allowing for labor mobility across regions would increase the speed of convergence in per capita income levels and that migration has a negative causal impact on regional growth rates. Although the empirical literature has uncovered some evidence for the former implication, the latter has not been verified empirically. This paper provides empirical evidence for the negative causal impact of migration on provincial growth rates in a developing country with a high level of internal migration that is characterized by unskilled labor exiting rural areas for urban centers. We utilize instrumental variables estimation method with an instrument unique to the country examined and also control for provincial fixed effects.

Since its inception, Turkey has experienced several migration movements. It is a transit country that both have immigration and emigration structure. Although a wide variety of reasons for these migration movements, one of the reasons is economic development. For this reason, the main assumption of this study is that migration has effect on economic development. In the study the regional net migration data belongs to 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and also data obtained from SEGE-2011 published by Ministry of Development and annual data published by the Statistical Institute of Turkey were used. As a result of statistical analyzes it has been seen that economic development has an impact on the migration and migration has an impact on four item of expenditure (food and non-alcoholic beverages, housing and tenancy, restaurants and hotels, entertainment and culture).

Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, 2008

The aim of this paper is to show the impact of relative population change on regional income convergence. Using the panel data of 64 Turkish provinces from 1987 to 2000, the results from modified convergence analyses show that both income and per capita income between provinces in Turkey indicate converging patterns. The convergence rates for the provincial per capita income, however, turned out to be about 30 percent larger than that of income. In order to examine this difference, the impact of relative population change on the growth process is incorporated using a decomposition analysis. The findings suggest that 17 percent of the 100 percentage point growth of per capita income resulted from the change in population share in favour of the provinces with high per capita incomes. The existence and pace of regional income convergence, therefore, may well be related to the degree of relative population change.

Zeszyty Naukowe SGGW, Polityki Europejskie, Finanse i Marketing

Efforts to get rid of poverty cause migration movements that have consequences not only for themselves, but also for future generations. Migration movements affect many economic variables such as human capital, demand, supply, the balance of payments, income distribution, wage level, and national income. The literature on migration is often studied in the economic, political and security fields. This study focuses on the relationship of migration with economic growth. There are studies that determine two-way causality in the relationship between economic growth and migration. It is seen that the country groups specified here can explain these different results. In this study, our purpose is to investigate whether international migration affects the economic growth of the receiving country. Therefore, the actual relationship between migration and the eco- nomic growth rate in terms of economic size using 14 similar European Union countries and Turkey for the period 1978-2019 (with pa...

Ekoist: Journal of Econometrics and Statistics, 2022

Spatial econometric models have become increasingly popular in economic studies, especially in recent years. These models differ from classical econometric models in that they take into account the effects arising from the location of the data set subject to the study. The spatial effect seen in a data set comes in two forms. The first form is spatial autocorrelation, which is defined as the correlation between neighboring locations. The other form is spatial heterogeneity, defined as the variance of a variable under consideration from place to place. The aim of this study was to find out whether the factors affecting provincial migration in Turkey have spatial characteristics. For this purpose, data from 2014 were selected as all data were accessible. A coherence matrix was constructed by considering the borders of the provinces to show the possible spatial relationship and this matrix was used in the econometric models. The distribution map of migration by province was examined and it was found that there was significant clustering, especially towards the northeast-southwest. From this point of view, the provinces where the spatial effect was significant in the clustered regions were identified using LISA statistics. The spatial model was determined in accordance with the orientation of the factors affecting migration and the movement of these variables was evaluated based on the provinces with significant correlation. The results obtained fit with the economic theory.

Migration Letters, 2021

This paper examines the trajectory of internal migration and its impact on growth leading to convergence in India. The analysis is based on secondary data sourced from the Reserve Bank of India, Census and Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation. It captures the data for a period of 20 years (1991-2011). An initial review indicates internal migration in the form of intra-state migration is very high compare to inter-state migration. The analysis of convergence/divergence suggests dispersion among states has increased in the concerned period. Similarly, absolute β-convergence indicate that rich states are growing faster than poor states. However, when conditional convergence is tested by various variables, conditional convergence among states is evident. However, migration and literacy rate as important indicator not producing the expected results, as migration which is expected to be negatively correlated to economic growth, is positive. The coefficient of the initial leve...

The present study investigates age-specific provincial migration in Turkey using both, five-year and life time measures for 2007-2008 and 2010-2011, a method which allows changes in the pattern of job markets and human settlements to be tracked. The aim of this study is first, to investigate in detail the relationship between the in-and out-migration of the provinces at the country level. The second is to determine the relationship between the in-migration and out-migration and the age-pyramids of the provinces. The third is to show the relationships between the economic development islands and the age-pyramids of the provinces. According to the results; at the provincial level, while the in-migration decreases as the distance increases between the origin provinces for the Western provinces, out-migration increases as the distance increases between the origin provinces in the East, SouthEast and the Black Sea regions. Although in general, distance negatively effects in-migration at the country level, for the less developed provinces in the East, SouthEast and the Black Sea regions, out-migration increases to the large metropolitan areas in the West. Consequently, it is therefore necessary to stimulate a public and private investment to create new jobs and to improve the quality of educational facilities.

ERSA conference …, 2006

It is clear that urbanization is a natural outgrowth of industrialization. But, in developing countries industrialization lag behind the rate of urbanization which involves much more rapid migration. In the case of Turkey, urbanization is mostly related with huge population growth in cities. So, it is worth to understand migration flows to benefit from population's spatial distribution. Thus, this paper aims to show the attributes of regional migration in Turkey. First, geographic regions are compared with each other according to different migration directions with the help of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The results show that, when four different migration directions are considered (from urban-to-urban, urbanto-rural, rural-to-urban and rural-to-rural) Marmara Region differ from the other in each cases. It might be related to urbanization level, job opportunities, education level, climatic and geographic conditions, accessibility etc. It is also worth that as a common 1990 2000 Annual growth rate of population %0

Sosyo ekonomi, 2022

This study tested whether there was a relationship between migration, unemployment, and urbanization based on the Harris-Todaro model in 12 regions of Turkey, which were formed according to NUTS-1 classification, in the period between 2008 and 2019. For this purpose, panel data methods that consider cross-section dependency were used in the study.