Hi Mrs Lim,

While searching for articles for our Diigo reading list, we found quite a number of good articles, but they were all in PDF format, which Diigo cannot highlight or annotate. Thus, we have created this blog and copied and pasted the relevant sections of those articles as blog posts so that we can use Diigo to highlight and annotate them. We have included the link for each article at the bottom of every post.

Thank you! :)

Causes of Rural-Urban Migration in Developing Countries

The Process of Rural-Urban

Migration in Developing Countries

by Machel McCatty

http://www2.carleton.ca/economics/ccms/wp-content/ccms-files/he-mccatty-machel.pdf

2.0 Causes of Rural-Urban Migration

2.1 Issues Faced in Rural Areas

Rural populations wittingly or unwittingly, have become a part of an economic system, which sees goods being farmed for the primary goal of supplying the urban markets. In many countries, rural areas supply the manual labor needed in many industries. Rural laborers generally have little education and are relegated to low paying jobs on plantations or in mines. This has provided the incentive for many who have migrated to the cities in search of opportunities for advancement. Rural populations experience the highs and lows of a global economy, for if the price of their crop drops, then their sustainability is affected. During recessions in the economy they are often among the first to lose their livelihoods. The cultural values and norms of the rural poor undergo severe changes when they come into contact with missionaries and foreign entities. Changes in the educational system results in what is taught in schools being different from traditional customs. In addition, they are exposed to radio programs, films, and more recently, television series produced in distant cities, some of which are half way across the globe.

Some rural areas when exposed to urbanization experienced a decline in their living conditions due to a high level of exploitation. In other areas certain groups couldn't cope with the change and were gradually impoverished, being unable to sustain themselves. However, for most rural inhabitants, living conditions changed for the better. With medical care becoming available to a larger number of persons, improvements in health and longevity were dramatic, a contributory factor to higher rates of population growth. The increased population caused a strain on the available land, made worse if it is communal land and there aren’t adequate property rights in place.

Another important issue faced by rural areas is the influence of the outside developed world on their culture and way of life. As time goes by and with the influence of media and the outside world, they become to recognize their state of poverty. People's wants change over time, and when they are being told they need certain things they begin to think that way, and many of these things may not be tangible for large portions of the populations.

People from rural areas may rise to positions of affluence that were previously thought to belong to other levels of the society. Rural inhabitants’ perception of a better life changes when observing the new success of the people from their communities, rural dwellers can then analyze how these people have achieved such positions, and hope to emulate their success. Rural inhabitants know what it takes to achieve the lives of wealth they have been exposed to. They know that a high school education or a University degree can lead to a much higher expected income, thereby increasing their future income. With more money they can increase their consumption.

Many people have firsthand accounts of the success that can be had in urban areas. Some manage to improve their living conditions by staying in the areas where they are born, others move to other rural areas as farmers, traders or manual laborers. In general the prospects of employment in rural areas aren't positive, while the urban areas seem more rewarding.

2.2 Migration Forces

Rural-urban migration can be ignited by voluntary forces or involuntary forces. Involuntary forces or forced migration is migration that takes place when the migrant has no choice whether or not to move. Examples include political strife, family disagreements, fighting with neighbors and wars. Voluntary movement covers all migration done by choice. There are many factors that cause voluntary rural-urban migration, such as urban job opportunities; housing conditions; rural land tenure and inheritance patterns; rural social structure and cultural values; among other factors.

Rural inhabitants see and hear success stories about people that leave their community and move to cities, which also act as incentives for out-migration. Incentives for outmigration may be distorted, thereby creating excessive urbanization. Therefore, rather than targeting the migration itself, it is preferable to focus on the causative factors. Rural inhabitants, when presented with options of earning a living other than from farming, and which may not be as demanding or are financially more rewarding than farming, are very likely to accept the change. Depending on the country, farming offers only seasonal employment, not providing sufficient income to sustain the family households for an entire year. In many developing countries, farming is not looked upon with as much respect as, for example, a low level white collar job in the city. For many, farming is seen as strenuous, back breaking work. Consequently, policies that do not provide rural inhabitants with viable economic alternatives will likely lead to migration, creating problems of over urbanization in the cities. As long as there is an income differential, people will always move to where there is a greater income.

2.3 Poverty and Lack of Opportunities in Rural Areas

Poverty is still one of the most serious problems in the world. Many existing development policies take poverty alleviation into consideration, which has led to much economic advancement. It is estimated that over 1 billion people in the world still live in poverty. In the developing world, urban poverty is persistent, with the majority of the poor living in rural areas, hence it is in these areas that poverty alleviation policies should be concentrated.

The most valid assumptions when generalizing about the poor in rural areas, is that they are dispersed all over the poor regions. Among minority groups and indigenous peoples, women, (whether or not they are housewives), and children account for the larger percentage.Data collected from a number of surveys support these generalizations. According to (Todaro p.229), about two thirds of the poor in rural areasget by and sustain their lives with subsistence farming either as small farmers or working on land owned by other people. The other third are engaged in small scale activities. Poverty profiles for developing countries characterize the poor as being agricultural households with little arable land. In an agricultural based economy, where poor residents lack access to resources and there is a high level of inequality and an inequitable distribution of assets, non-farm labor becomes an important source of income for the poor. Especially in the cases of small farmers and non land owners who account for the majority of agricultural laborers, there is a heavy dependence on the rural labor markets for a huge portion of their incomes. How the rural labor market functions and the wages being offered, have an important impact on the state of poverty in all countries of the developing world.

2.4 Urban Job Opportunities

According to the Todaro model, rural migrants may not find employment immediately upon arrival in the city, and when they do, there is a high likelihood that their wages will be lower than they expected, resulting in lower than expected income. Educated and skilled immigrants may not have to wait as long as unskilled migrants to find jobs, since often their skills are in demand in the urban sector. However, migration of skilled personnel is a further reflection of inadequate policies as this further weakens the potential of rural areas to develop.

Many factors influence people's decisions to relocate to urban areas. As empirical research has shown, a disproportional number of these migrants are young adults, all of whom move to the cities for various, albeit mostly economic reasons. Empirical studies have documented that the majority of migrants to cities are young and have higher levels of education. They migrate because they have longer prospects of earnings and their probability of getting hired in the urban areas is higher.

Employment in urban areas can fall under two broad categories, firstly the formal sector and secondly the informal sector. The formal sector characterizes all activities that are recognized by the government as being legal in nature and providing tax revenue. Traditional occupations such as banking, office clerks, and plumbing would fall under this category. These jobs tend to pay more than jobs in the informal sector, and they garner a greater deal of respect. Many migrants who move to cities would like to obtain a job in the formal sector, but find it difficult to do so. They need to have a certain level of education to be able to compete with the urban residents for these jobs. Worker productivity and income tend to be higher in the formal sector than the informal sector. Workers in the formal sector enjoy job security, proper working conditions and

retirement pensions. The second category, the urban informal sector will be discussed in

more detail below.

2.5 Urban Informal Sector

The urban informal sector, unlike its formal counterpart, includes all activities that are unregulated and small scale in nature. Not much attention was given to this unregulated, unorganized and mostly illegal sector till the 1970s. Observations were made in several developing countries that certain labor market activities failed to show up in statistics relevant in the formal modern sector. The majority of the new workers in the urban labor force seemed to create their own employment and start their own businesses, or work for small-scale family run enterprises. The self-employed were engaged in a variety of activities such as hustling, street vending, knife sharpening, prostitution, selling drugs and selling fireworks. Other migrants found jobs as barbers, carpenters, mechanics, maids, personal servants and artisans. Others managed to become successful entrepreneurs with several employees making high incomes.

After some time, some graduated to the formal sector where they are subject to government labor regulations by becoming legally registered and licensed. According to Todaro, studies reveal that the share of the urban labor force engaged in informal sector activities is growing and now ranges from 30% to 70%, the average being around 50%.

The majority of the workers entering the informal sector are recent rural migrants who are unable to find jobs in the formal sector. Their main reason for taking part in the informal sector is to use what little skills they have to earn enough income to sustain their daily lives. As mentioned before, urban informal sector activities can be labor intensive, the labor coming from every member of the household that is able to work. They work 13very long hours, sometimes making it difficult for the children to attend school regularly.

The informal sector is connected to the formal sector, since it provides opportunities for people who are unable to find employment in the formal sector. While it serves as a conduit for excess labor to escape poverty and unemployment, depending on the developing country in question, wages in the informal sector are not much better than rural wages. Although living conditions and working conditions may not be better than in the rural areas, the informal sector wages have remained higher than the wages in the poorest rural areas. Migrants interested in getting employment in the formal sector, find the informal sector as a safety net to fall back on if things do not work out for them. The informal sector is therefore seen as a cause of rural-urban migration, because it lowers the risk of the individual being unemployed once they move to the cities.

2.6 Government Policies Creating Urban Bias

Another cause of rural-urban migration is urban bias. Government policies supporting disproportionate increases in wage rates and employment opportunities in the urban areas contribute to imbalances in the rural urban landscape. This topic will be analyzed in greater detail later in the paper.

The migration of Bolivians to Argentina is a long-standing phenomenon since

the presence of Bolivians was recorded in the first Argentine census in 1869

(INDEC, 1997). Since the 1950s, however, this migration flow has been

increasing in significance, both numerically as well as in terms of the way it is

perceived by the Argentine population and its government (INDEC, 1997;

Grimson, 1997, 1999; Sassone, 1989; see also Margulis, 1998).

There are three recent trends in Bolivian migration worth highlighting. In the

first place, these are related to the changing destinations (Benencia and Gazzotti,

1997; Sassone, 1989). While Bolivians used to migrate to the northern regions

of Argentina, they changed their preferences in the 1970s in favour of the cap-

ital, Buenos Aires (INDEC, 1997). The shift of the economy toward the tertiary

sector and the mechanization of agricultural work, which decreased the

demand for seasonal agricultural workers, have contributed to this change.

Secondly, there has been a feminization of migration in general and of Bolivians

in particular (Balán, 1995; INDEC, 1997; IOM, 1997). In the past, it was mainly

men who migrated (Balán, 1995; Dandler and Medeiros, 1988; INDEC, 1997;

Marshall, 1981). In fact, the migration of Bolivians was one where men pre-

dominated to a greater extent than in the migration of people from other

neighbouring countries (INDEC, 1997). Since the 1980s, however, women have

started playing a much more active role in this migration flow. The increased

labour market participation of Argentine women, their higher educational attain-

ments, as well as the aging population are all factors that lead to an increased

demand for domestic services, which are mainly met by migrant women. Bolivian

women are generally employed in informal street trading in both clothes and

vegetables, textile manufacturing, and to a lesser extent in domestic work

(Benencia and Karasik, 1995; Grimson, 2000; Mugarza, 1985; Recchini de Lattes,

1988; Zunino, 1997). In contrast, Bolivian men who migrate to rural areas or

the outskirts of Buenos Aires usually work in agricultural production while those

in urban areas usually work in construction and textile manufacturing (Benencia

and Karasik, 1995; Grimson, 2000).

Thirdly, this international migration has become increasingly irregular (Benencia

and Gazzotti, 1995; Correa, 2000; Marshall, 1981; Orellana, n.d.; Sassone, 1989).

Until the mid-1980s it was relatively easy to regularize one’s stay in Argentina.

Also, a number of amnesties have been implemented since 1949 with the aim of

facilitating the regularization of foreign workers (Sassone, 1987). However, in

the last decade it has become increasingly more difficult for migrants to become

regular residents due to increased costs, and the requirement of a working con-

tract or close relatives who are already residents in Argentina. In particular,

some observers have argued that during the 1990s the Dirección Nacional de

Migraciones (DNM), the governmental agency responsible for managing mi-

gration as well as implementing migration policies, started imposing additional

obstacles for migrants originating from neighbouring countries. Without

implementing a specific policy, such practices increased the likelihood of mi-

grants remaining in an undocumented situation (Oteiza and Novick, 2000).

These wider patterns are clearly visible in the migration of people from the

communities taken into account. Survey data suggest that Buenos Aires is

the main destination. This is explained by the fact that they started migrating

relatively late (late 1980s and early 1990s), when the Argentine capital had

already taken precedence as the migrants’ favoured destination. Survey data

also show that both men and women migrate for work. However, while men’s

migration began to intensify in the early 1990s, especially since 1993, women’s

migration started increasing in 1997. This confirms the wider patterns of Bolivian

migration to Argentina in relation to the feminization of migration. Finally, the

migrants’ stories also confirm the trend toward illegality and the increasing

difficulties migrants face in their attempts to regularize their stay in Argentina.

The main reasons for wanting to migrate are economic and related to poverty

and limited working opportunities.

Seasonal migration is customary for those coming from rural areas. Households

maximize their income and subsistence options by alternating subsistence work

on their own plots of land in Bolivia with income-generating opportunities, often

in the form of taking employment in urban areas of Bolivia and/or in Argentina.

Source: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:oVJSpnyuHkkJ:www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/bastia_2005_teenage_migration_0108.pdf+bolivia+migration+patterns&hl=en&gl=sg&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiYNCPmBxx8ZLhYAoBcMM3qlTwMSPi2jemf1o_6YJUay4O7Vui0xQb-Phbd29puK9ip7LNxJQ13oOD1varBxdLGV1ttSN9rw8Hd1UvKMORrRI-YJ1zw4_ygrs87qjnRnU0L5_qN&sig=AHIEtbQji-Y1in8BeDKZElV2sw8N0dzdkQ

Geography and Development in Bolivia

I. Introduction
In recent years, several papers have reconsidered the impact of geography on
development, adding it to a hypothetical consensus list of factors explaining growth
(Fischer, 1993; Barro, 1997). In empirical cross-country studies that focus on
geographical factors, one could characterize Bolivia as a “well-behaved” observation.
For instance, a tropical geographical location, landlocked status, limited agricultural
productivity, and high tropical disease burdens are among key factors Gallup, Sachs,
and Mellinger (1998) identify as obstacles to development. Bolivia displays all these
traits, and simultaneously, has the lowest GDP per capita and Human Development
Index in South America.
This paper argues, however, that considering the impact of geographical variables
within Bolivia makes feasible a considerably richer analysis. The picture that emerges
is occasionally not entirely consistent with the international evidence, but nonetheless
points toward a systematic and significant impact of geography on development.
The key observation behind this focus on within-country variation is that in
Bolivia, geographical regions are defined not by latitude, as in most cross-country
studies, but by altitude, or somewhat equivalently, longitude. This happens because
altitude variations have endowed what would otherwise be a rather homogenous
“tropical” country with at least three distinct geographical areas. The general goal of
this research is to study how this division has affected the country’s economic
development since 1950.
With this objective, the paper first defines and characterizes the three
geographical areas used in the analysis: the Andean, Sub-Andean or Valley, and
Lowland regions. It seeks to establish that there are significant, geographicallyinduced
differences among them. These are found along dimensions as varied as
climate traits, agricultural production and disease patterns, and the languages
predominantly used by the local population.
These inter-regional differences motivate an analysis of how geography has
influenced what may be the central aspect of Bolivian development since 1950: a
significant shift of population and productive activities from the Andean (and to a
lesser extent the Sub-Andean) region to the Lowlands. This event is associated with
the emergence of three dominant urban centers, one in each of the areas discussed.
In studying these developments, the paper focuses on the following topics and
arguments:
1) The distribution of population. This section first describes the migration flows
that account for a significant portion of the Lowlands’ growth. It also presents
results suggesting these flows have been responsive to differences in income
levels.
2) Observed urbanization patterns. This part of the analysis argues that partially
due to migration, Bolivia displays peculiar urban concentration patterns, at
least relative to most of its neighbors and comparable developing countries.
Namely, since 1950 Bolivia has not urbanized around a dominant city, and in
fact the usual concentration measures have evolved in unexpected ways.
3) The distribution of productive activity. This section first describes the
significant shift in economic activity from the Andean (and Sub-Andean) to
the Lowland region, an expected result given the mentioned migration and
urbanization patterns. In trying to account for this development, the section
explores:
a) The way in which natural endowments help explain this shift, paying
special attention to the agricultural products around which (particularly the
early) Lowlands growth was concentrated;
b) The transfers of private and public financial capital which, combined with
the human capital movements described, have made this region’s growth
feasible;
c) How transport costs appear to influence the geographical distribution of
industrial and other productive activities across Bolivia, highlighting the
role of natural resources and urban economies.
4) The distribution of welfare. The focus here is on the extent to which
geographical variables explain regional welfare levels, as measured by GDP
per capita and social development indices. A robust result is that in Bolivia,
contrary to the usual cross-country evidence, more tropical (lower altitude),
further inland areas have higher welfare levels.
5) Convergence. This final section considers whether there has been interregional
convergence along these dimensions, and how the lowlands’ growth
may have affected the distribution of welfare. No robust conclusions emerge
here. Some welfare measures suggest no clear tendency, whereas a specific
poverty measure suggests there has in fact been some divergence between
regions.
Drawing on these results and observations, a final section presents some
conclusions and discusses policy implication. Additionally, this section highlights some
areas for further research.
III. The regional distribution of population
Historically, the greater share of Bolivia’s population has been located in the
Andean region, with the Sub-Andean and Lowland regions coming next, in that order.
As Figure 1 shows, however, the Lowlands have been gaining importance since 1950,
almost equaling the Sub-Andean regions’ share by 1992. This figure is based on the
censuses of 1950, 1976, and 1992, the three available for the period under study.
Figure 1
This pattern is also reflected in Table 3, which presents net migration and
population growth rates by department. As the table shows, the two highest 1976-
1992 growth rates are in Lowland region departments, while the two lowest, one of
them negative, are in the Andean area.
This differential growth is due to variations in fertility rates, but also to migration
patterns. Table 3 also shows that all three Andean departments have negative net
migration rates at least during the 1987-1992 period, while all Lowland ones have positive rates at least during the same years. As in most other aspects, the Sub-
Andean results are “sandwiched” between the other two.
In light of the significant migration flows suggested by this evidence, it is
interesting to explore how responsive these have been to income levels. Unfortunately,
this type of analysis can only be carried out in the case of urban-bound migration,
since detailed data on migrants’ characteristics is available from household surveys
carried out only in the nine departmental capitals.5 Additionally, this section focuses
on urban-urban migration, because an “adequate” characterization of migrants’ regions
of origin and regions of destination is available only at this level.
Table 3
The analysis uses a conventional regression framework seeking to relate wage
levels and net migration rates across cities. Providing some introductory information in
this regard, Figure 2 plots net migration rates against wage indices for the nine
departmental capitals in Bolivia.6 Apart from one outlier, Oruro, there appears to be
the expected relation between wage levels and net migration rates.
Figure 2
To explore this issue systematically, Table 4 presents a profit regression, where a
migration indicator is regressed on a set of individual characteristics (age, years of
education, marital status, and ethnicity), a set of characteristics of the city of origin
(unemployment rate, wage level, and poverty incidence), and an analogous set of
destination descriptors. The default value of the dependent variable is 0, and it is 1 if
the individual has moved from one of the major nine cities to another within the last
five years. The sample is restricted to heads of households.
Table 4
As is often the case in these settings, the results suggest that, all else equal, younger,
more educated people are more likely to migrate. The other individual-level
characteristics are not statistically significant.
Focusing on the origin and destination characteristics, the coefficients are all of
the expected sign, suggesting people are more likely to migrate to areas with higher
wage and lower unemployment and poverty levels. These variables, however, are not
significant.
To summarize, this section has presented basic information on the significant
changes in the geographic distribution of population that took place in Bolivia since the
1950s. The main finding is the declining importance of the Andean area and the rising
participation of the Lowland region. These changes are the product not only of
differential fertility rates, but also of significant migration, which at least at an urban
level appears to be potentially responsive to economic conditions. This last aspect that
will be important in linking these developments to the shifts in the distribution of
economic activity discussed in later sections.
IV. Urbanization Patterns
The association between growth and urbanization is one of the central empirical
regularities in development. As Figure 3 shows, Bolivia’s experience in this realm is
qualitatively consistent with the international evidence: there have been persistent
increases in national and region-specific urbanization rates during the period under
study. While no region had an urbanization rate higher than 50% in 1950, two of
them did by 1992. The most rapid increase and highest urbanization level is observed
in the Lowlands.
Figure 3
previous section may account for the fact that in one aspect of urbanization, Bolivia
displays relatively idiosyncratic characteristics, at least if its neighbors’ experience is
taken as a benchmark. Namely, unlike Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru, the
country has not urbanized around a clearly dominant city (this list excludes Brazil, the
remaining neighboring country). In other terms, urban concentration, by any of the
usual measures, is lower in Bolivia than in comparable countries.
To illustrate this, consider Wheaton and Shishido (1981), who provide evidence
on this topic for 38 developing countries. Their results are consistent with the level of
development having at first a positive and then a negative effect on urban
concentration. In their sample, Bolivia would clearly be in the segment where this
relationship is positive.
In order to measure urban concentration, these authors introduce a number of
measures. The first is the Urban Primacy Index, simply the ratio of the population in
the
largest city (P1) to the total urban population (P).
UP=P1/P
Figure 4 shows the evolution of this measure both at a national and regionalspecific
level. The lower part of the figure indicates that the relative importance of the
largest city, La Paz, has declined: from containing almost 40% of the urban population
in 1950, the city’s share declined to slightly over 30% in 1992. In contrast to the
international experience, therefore, economic development has been associated with
declining urban concentration, at least by this measure.
Figure 4
The upper part of this figure shows, however, that while the emergence of
smaller cities may partially account for this declining concentration, it also reflects the
rising dominance of one city within each of the three regions discussed. These are La
Paz in the Andean, Cochabamba in the Sub-Andean, and Santa Cruz in the Lowland
region. The growth of these three cities accounts for why all within-region urban
primacy indices have increased since 1950.
These three cities have also grown faster than all others combined: the
percentage of the urban population contained in these metropolitan areas has gone
from about 55 in 1950 to 65 percent in 1992. Thus, their growth accounts for a
disproportionate share of the general urbanization observed in Figure 3.
Because the behavior of the Urban Primacy Index is dominated by only the
largest city in the area under study, the literature also tries to achieve a more
balanced picture using the Herfindahl concentration index, drawing from Industrial
Organization. If Pi is the population of city i, and P is the total urban population in the
area under consideration, the Herfindahl index is given by:
H=_( Pi / P)2
As Figure 5, shows, qualitatively similar results emerge when this measure is used
instead.
It is relevant to note that Figures 4 and 5 are based on Metropolitan Area (MA)
rather than city-level data. This distinction matters only for two cities: La Paz and
Cochabamba, and mainly in the first case. The La Paz metropolitan area consists of
the cities of El Alto and La Paz. The former contains about 40% of their combined
population. If city rather than MA data is used, the only qualitatively important change
arises in Figure 5, because the Herfindahl index in the Andean region no longer rises
between 1976 and 1992. Because El Alto and La Paz are contiguous cities with
integrated labor markets, this distinction does not seem important.
Figure 5
An alternate way to consider urban concentration has recently received more
attention, namely Zipf’s “law” or the so-called rank-size rule. Put shortly, this rule
states cities’ populations should be inversely proportional to their rank. In other
words, the nth largest city in the country should have a population size roughly equal to
1/n that of the largest city.
In regression terms, this “rule” posits that the estimated coefficient of an
equation relating the log of city rank to the log of city population size should be equal
to approximately –1. Several authors have noted this “rule” works remarkably well.
Krugman (1986) points out that for the 130 largest metropolitan areas in the United
States, estimation yields a coefficient of –1.003 with a standard error of only 0.01. He
suggests Zipf’s law does not work as precisely in other developed countries, but that it
still provides a good fit if the “primal” city (e.g., London and Paris in the case of the
United Kingdom and France, respectively) is removed from the sample.
To explore this issue in the Bolivian context, Table 5 presents simple rank-size
rule regressions, using data on the 20 largest urban centers in 1950, 1976, and 1992.9
As the table shows, Bolivia does not quite adjust to the expectation. Even in 1950, the
coefficient of interest is significantly different from one, and its divergence increases
with each census, reaching a point estimate of –1.6 in 1992. Eliminating the largest or
the three largest cities does not have uniform effects on these results, although in the
last two periods it moves them closer to expectation. When the three largest cities are
removed, the coefficient of interest changes to –1.53, -1.40, and –1.43, respectively.
Table 5
Though the reasons behind the relative “failure” of Zipf’s “law” in Bolivia are hard
to ascertain, its worsening performance can at least be partially traced to the growing
and converging importance of the three largest metropolitan areas: La Paz, Santa
Cruz, and Cochabamba. As indicated above, these three centers’ share of the urban
population increased from 55 to 65% between 1950 and 1992, and the three are
clearly much larger than all other Bolivian cities.
Table 6 shows this was not always the case, and is suggestive of how these cities’
growth affects the rank size rule’s performance. For each census year, this table
features the seven largest cities and their respective populations.
Table 6
A first point to note is that while La Paz and Cochabamba have been on the “top
three” list since 1950, Santa Cruz only joined in 1976, moving straight from fifth to
second place between these two census years. This partially reflects the strong westeast
net migration patterns described above. The final column in Table 6 shows each
city’s population growth rate. The two cities with the highest growth rates are Santa
15
Cruz and Cochabamba, which has determined that they have been able to approach La
Paz in size.
While La Paz was 3.1 and 4.6 times as large as the second and third largest cities
in 1976, these ratios had fallen to 1.6 and 2.2 by 1992. Particularly when regressions
focus on larger cities, these two observations alone account for part of the rank-size
rule’s worsening performance.
Another notable point about Table 6 is the relatively high “flexibility” in rankings.
Of the seven cities considered, only two, La Paz and Tarija, have not experienced a
change in their position between 1950 and 1992. As a subsequent section will argue,
many of these changes, including of course the rising importance of Santa Cruz, can be
explained by making reference to natural resources and their impact on shifts in the
distribution of economic activity.
Returning to urban concentration, an interesting question is whether Zipf’s rule
“does better” within regions. Table 7 presents evidence in this regard, focusing on the
15 largest cities within each area.10 An interesting result is that in this case the
coefficient estimates are even further from –1. This result is particularly strong in the
Sub-Andean region, where the coefficient on the log of city rank approaches –2.
Table 7
To summarize all results on urban concentration, the following points can be
made:
1) As a preliminary and well-established fact, and consistent with the
international experience, Bolivia has experienced a rapid urbanization
process in the period under study.
2) At a national level and at least since 1950, however, Bolivia does not display
a positive growth/urban concentration association that is frequent in
developing countries in general, and among its neighbors in particular. This
seems to be mainly due to the relative decline of La Paz as a population
center, and the rise of Cochabamba and particularly Santa Cruz as alternate
cities.
3) Within each geographic area identified in this paper, however, urban
concentration is clearly on the rise and significant. In none of these areas is
the urban primacy rate below 0.5, and in the Andean region it is above 0.7.
4) When the rank-size rule is used to explore urban concentration in Bolivia,
the results are not entirely consistent with the expectation, and in fact seem
to have been diverging from it over time. A partial reason for this, once
again, appears to be the relative rise of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz with
respect to the historical primacy of La Paz.
5) Finally, the ranking of Bolivia’s cities by size appears to be relatively
“flexible”, with five of the seven largest cities changing their position in the
period under study.

Source: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:FIJHgM6qspQJ:www.iadb.org/document.cfm%3Fid%3D788015+bolivia+migration+patterns&hl=en&gl=sg&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgJIMsvDSdmjiqvtXF7txs1Sjp3ht8rgADFdt3p1q9IRB_aLyvh2wxqm9-x6o_3LMpAP6rzS_3rm-6DPiVMlJBgxZxuzrQcWupXcjsnK51i38ahP-cM6f2yh0GoGj_x4LYNwirn&sig=AHIEtbSJSQrhnpD3MME96uIwXuPOjl3Jxw

Note: Only the main points related to migration were extracted from the article and placed here; tables, figures and additional information not directly or significantly related to migration were excluded.

The internal migration processes have contributed to a changing demographic profile,

Bolivia has shifted from a predominantly rural nation, through 1976, to a country with an

urban majority at present. This phenomenon, which brings us closer to the Latin American

demographic profile of growing urbanisation, in the Bolivian case has obeyed the acute

dismantling and pauperisation of the peasant economy and rural society as a result of the

still unequal and exploitive terms of exchange between the countryside and the cities, and a

progressive expansion of the agricultural frontier to the detriment of the communal

territories of origin.

The significant decline in the relative importance of the agricultural sector in the

national product as well as the important decline in traditional agrarian economies, which

are the major exporters of rural population and originators of the migration flows that give

rise to new patterns of occupation of the urban space, human settlements, and social

mobility that widen the breach of social differentiation in the cities, paralleling urban

growth and the continuous pressure of a contingent of job-seekers in the labour force.

The resulting urbanisation rate has been climbing, reaching 16 per thousand during

the 80s, placing the country among the group of the fastest urbanisation in Latin America

(UNDP, 1998), in spite of the enormous shortfall in service provision.

In 1900, the urban population was just 15 per cent; today it is over 60 per cent, and

the three major cities (La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz) hold over 37 per cent of the

country’s population. An additional 21 per cent reside in the 112 remaining cities and

about 40 per cent live in the rural zones, with a declining trend, as shown in the estimated

data for 1997 (39.5 per cent).

The structural changes have had an impact on the labour market, reducing

employment in the public sector and in the private industrial sector, increasing service and

commercial employment and generating linkages among formal enterprise and family and

semi-entrepreneurial units around consignment sales, sub-contracting, part production,

home-made piecework, etc. This maintains the high levels of employment in the family

and semi-entrepreneurial units, which when taken together are giving rise to hidden and

open forms of wage labour.

Between 1993 and 1997, the family and non-paid worker categories

grew as modes and specific conditions for female labour force insertion.

In 1993, two-fifths of the population were occupied in small family units and over

one-half of female employment was concentrated in this sector (Montaño, G.; 1997). By

1997, this sector had incorporated more than three-fifths of the jobs, corresponding to 51

per cent of the women.

Linked to this phenomenon we also find a growth in the proportion of female heads of

household, which reached 24.26 per cent of households by 1992. Among this group, about

82.8 per cent were single, widowed, or divorced women, conditions forcing these women

into the labour market.

The urban occupational insertion of women is concentrated in services, social

services, education, health, social security, and commerce (teachers, nurses, secretaries,

saleswomen, etc.), among the better educated; while the less-educated or un-schooled

women only have household employment and small-scale trade as their principal

alternatives

The growing difficulties in the conditions for reproduction of the ma le and female

rural productive units promote growing rural emigration flows towards the cities, although

there are also some rural zones of migration attraction with dynamic economic activities,

where there are agricultural firms producing flowers and fruits in el Valle (principally heart

of palm), agro-industry in the Oriente (cotton, soybeans, and sugar), and the production of

coca and other products.

Thus the rural labour market structure is defined by the agrarian structure still

predominating in the rural milieu, the survival of traditional agriculture, the agricultural

modernisation processes, rural-rural and urban-rural migration processes, as well as rural

settlements of alien origin, modernisation with urban influence, expansion of the markets

for land, capital, and labour, availability of natural and forest resources, and a certain

growth in the market for consumer goods in the most modern regions.

An important characteristic is the temporary and permanent labour supply coming

from the smaller agric ultural units that feed the migration streams with a growing presence

of young rural women whose main occupational destination is employment as household

workers or in small-scale commerce, principally in the cities. Nevertheless, 47 per cent of

working women have stayed in the rural areas.

Given the seasonal character of agricultural employment and the difficulties for

achieving subsistence levels in rural agricultural, the male and female workers are forced

to seek employment alternatives in the rural market and/or in the urban market.

Opportunities and access to other sources of labour, however, are crossed by the

differential conditions between men and women in educational and linguistic terms. Rural

women present very high illiteracy rates (49.9 per cent) as compared to the men (15.5 per

cent), as a result of their greater monolingualism in their native tongues and, of course,

lower levels of schooling, which lower their future expectations.

Bolivia has important structural and circumstantial factors that are incentives for

internal migration streams in different directions, but principally rural-urban ones, which

have accelerated since the 70s. Similarly, the scant productive and industrial calling in the

country and its entrepreneurial class have been the permanent cause of international

migration flows of different types, due to the impossibility of absorbing the population

expelled from the countryside or for “re-localising it” elsewhere, such as the case of the

colonial countries in the past. These circumstances have generated massive migration

flows motivated by the search for work to survive, but also the professional and labour

alternatives impossible to find in the country, as a result of its basically primary and

tertiary productive structure.

These conditions have converted Bolivia traditionally into a sending country,

providing immigrants to other countries, with a negative international migration balance.

In general, the migrations have been oriented to the surrounding countries in South

America (principally Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru), North America (United States,

Mexico, and Canada), and several European countries.

The migration flows mentioned have arisen principally from labour and professional

causes, without excluding other motivations. After the decade of the 60s, important flows

can be seen with an urban origin whose main protagonists have been the middle -income

levels. Migration has also been important among mid-upper income strata, for purposes of

residence and studie s; these flows have been oriented fundamentally towards the United

States, Great Britain, France, and Spain. In this case, for these social strata, the selection of

a country of destination is linked to its social, economic, and historical value, and their

significance as models for society.

The reasons for migration have been constant: work and better income; a search for

better living conditions, to climb the social ladder, prestige and new opportunities;

acquisition of new symbolic and cultural elements with differential meanings according to

their social strata, but different from their connotations in the country of origin. There are

also reasons linked to differential opportunities for occupational insertion according to

qualifications, economic situations, and the different networks that exist, whether these be

regional, ethnic and cultural, or national.

Studies have found that rural emigrants fit into urban occupations after prior

migration experiences in rural zones of the receiving country, or supported by a social

network based on blood or nationality relationships, which also play an important role in

housing access and basic social footing in their new milieu.

The decision to emigrate obeys a multitude of circumstances, primordially a lack of

satisfactory labour options. For almost all of them, the decisions are made by the family,

since emigration is assumed to be a family project, which follows specific family

strategies, whether these are referred to its survival, prestige, or alternatives for improving

family maintenance.

It was also clear that the family with members abroad is proud of the fact, so that

migration by women is not restricted, given that in some way she will be linked to her

relatives, the family will benefit from her labours, and her labour begins to be seen as

something ever-more common and necessary. The exit restrictions fall within the new

requirement frameworks for female labour performance, but in general, they consider that

the emigration will be beneficial for their future and the future of the rest of the family.

Source: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_117926.pdf

Note: Document was simplified and only main points were taken out.

While Bolivian was predominantly rural in 1976 (38% urban), it became predominantly urban by 2001 (62% urban). Urbanization accelerated in the 1980s and changed the demographic profile of the country. Fertility rates declined, infant and child mortality rates declined and life expectancy increased. Unlike other Latin countries, however, Bolivian urbanization proceeded in a number of cities, rather than in a single hub (Urquiola et al 1999). The cities of La Paz/El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz today make up two thirds of the total population. Most rural-urban migrants left the rural highlands for better life opportunities in these three cities. Population growth has accelerated in the seven largest cities since 1950. The cities of Santa Cruz and El Alto showed the highest population growth in recent years. A look at recent household data show that most internal migration involves families and individuals moving from rural areas to capital cities (52%), followed by individuals moving from small towns to capital cities (27%).

The story behind rural-to-urban migration accelerates rapidly after two exogenous shocks in the 1980s. The first shock is a nationwide drought in 1982-1983 that affected both the highland

altiplano regions of Oruro and Potosi, as well as the valley regions of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca. While neither census nor household surveys captured the population shifts that followed, there is considerable qualitative literature on the rapid influx of displaced rural-migrants (Sandoval, Albo and Greaves, 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1987), and the growth of the outskirts of the cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz. Sandoval et al, in particular, suggest that rural aymara and quechua migrants were “riding between two worlds”, during this period: rural community life and urban squatter neighborhoods. The “ruralization” of urban life is an important theme of the early 1980s drought wave.

The second shock is an economic growth collapse in 1985-1986, caused by the decline of tin prices and a generalized contraction of the economy, following hyperinflation and adjustment in the late-1980s (see Hausmann, Gray Molina and Rodriguez, forthcoming). The growth collapse affected the heavily populated mining of northern Potosi and southern Oruro The literature of the period describes a relatively rapid process of forced resettlement of as many as 30,000 miner families, aided by compensation policies that provided a lump-sum grant to retired miners of COMIBOL, the state mining enterprise.

We tackle the determinants of migration question in two steps. In the first step, we estimate

probabilistic models for rural-urban migration for the whole sample, including regressors for observed characteristics (age, experience, education, wealth, civil status) In the second step, we

address the self-selection problem, by including the residuals of the selection equation estimate

thus capturing the effects of non-observable characteristics (skill, luck or talent). With this second step, which only includes migrants, we provide a non-biased estimate of the impact of migration over earnings in the place of destination. In the following section we’ll return to this issue focusing more attention on the place premium for migrants.

First, being married reduced the probability of migrating. This makes sense given what we

know about the migration process: typically, heads of household migrate first, make a foothold

and eventually are followed by spouse and children. In some cases, this eventually includes

extended family and friends (see Albo and Sandoval 1983). Second, higher levels of education

predict a higher probability of migration. This also fits in well with what is known from past studies (Andersen 2002). Education levels allow a transition from rural to urban labor markets, from lowpaying jobs to higher paying jobs. Third, the higher the family’s level of wealth, the higher the probability of migrating. In the Bolivian case, the poorest do not migrate. This is indicative of high internal migration costs. Only the better-off can take on the risk and associated costs of migration (see Tannuri-Pianto et al 2005). One important omission in the probit model is the non-statistical significance of indicators that measure the provision of local social services. This would tend to reassert the “pull” factor of urban settings rather than “push” factors from rural communities.

First, earnings increase with schooling. However, the joint effect of schooling and being a

migrant is negative. We hypothesize that this might reflect poor schooling quality in rural or other urban towns, which do not result in higher earnings in capital-city labor markets. The effect of schooling quality is something we return to when estimating place premiums. Second, earnings decrease for women and decrease even further for indigenous women. Both the gender and ethnic biases are reported in other studies on urban earnings in Bolivia. We will also look at this in more detail with the quantile regressions that disaggregate gender and ethnic biases by income level. Finally, being older increases earnings up to a point, and then moves in the other direction. This is also widely documented in the literature on migration in Bolivia. Younger migrants tend to have a better chance of moving up the earnings ladder over time.

The place premium approach allows us to estimate wage differences for otherwise identical

workers in rural and urban areas, and see how much of the difference is based on observable

(education, gender, ethnicity) or unobservable differences (skill, talent, ability). The “place

premium” is the wage difference attributable to geographic place of residence alone, after

controlling for the observable and unobservable effects. It reflects a powerful incentive for

migration, both at the individual and at the household level.

Besides incentives to migrate, high place premiums pose an additional puzzle. If returns to

education are high and increasing, why do we not see many more Bolivian children moving up to

the top of the education ladder? The literature on education returns has focused on two types of

explanation (see Perry et al 2006; Bourguignon et al 2005). First, given that returns to education are lumpy, and diplomas often matter a great deal, education seems attractive only when the long-term investments needed to complete at least a full course of secondary and some tertiary education can be realized. Second, in most countries the high average returns to schooling are not available to everyone; in particular, poor families tend to accrue returns to their investments in higher levels of education that are significantly below the average market return.

This paper has focused on internal migration and its effects over human development. In recent

years, however, academic attention has shifted to external migration, both for its implications at

home and abroad (see Clemens et al 2008; Fajnzylber and Lopez 2008, World Bank 2009).

Unfortunately, there are is no single source of data that tracks both internal and external

migration data for Bolivia. While internal migration data are drawn from census and household

surveys in Bolivia, external migration data are drawn from census data from the US and OECD

countries.

Three characteristics stand out from the comparative data on external migration for Bolivia. The first has to do with the Bolivian migrant profile. Niimi and Ozden (2008) show comparative

information for Bolivia with respect to other Latin American countries, using US historical data on migration. Although the number of Bolivian migrants is not high (about 80,000 captured by the 2000 US Census), the typical Bolivian migrant tends to be have a higher than average degree of education (with respect to non-migrant Bolivians) and tends to be employed in higher skilled jobs (with respect to home). The age and gender composition of Bolivian migrants is mostly average for Latin American migrants to the US.

The second issue is the link between external migration and remittances. Acosta et al (2008)

analyze the effects of migrant remittances over poverty. Levels of remittances have increased

significantly over the past five years, from $ us 159 million in 2003 to an estimated $ us 927 million in 2008 (World Bank 2008). In general terms, the size of remittances is moderate in Latin American terms (between 5% and 10% of GDP), but in absolute terms, remittances are second only to gas exports by volume of foreign currency receipts. Acosta et al estimate, using 2002 household and remittance data, that Bolivian remittances account for a relatively small share of poverty reduction (0.4 percent reduction) and inequality reduction (0.002 of the gini coefficient reduction).

The relatively small impact might be affected by two measurement issues that have affected

comparable studies in Bolivia. The first is sampling. The MECOVI surveys are designed to produce robust estimates of urban and rural income, but tend to underestimate the number of household receiving remittances from abroad. The second problem is with the question that aims to capture remittances, because the wording of the remittances question is not immediately assimilated with transfers from family members by check, wire or cash. Besides measurement problems, the MECOVI surveys suggest remittances are received by middle and upper thirds of the income distribution, rather than the poorest third. This is consistent with the migrant profile which tends to show the poorest individuals in Bolivia do not migrate internally or externally to the extent of the non-poor.

The third issue is the analysis of place premiums for external migration. Clemens et al (2008)

estimate place premiums for a Bolivian workers in the US. A typical Bolivian-born, Bolivian

educated, urban male, formal-sector wage worker with moderate schooling makes 4 times as

much in the US as in Bolivia. The paper adjusts for selectivity and compensation differentials, using a selection model to estimate how migrants’ wage gains depend on their position in the

distribution of unobserved wage determinants both at the origin and at the destination, as well as the relationship between these positions. Following all adjustments, Clemens et al estimate that the wages of a Bolivian worker of equal productivity, willing to move, would be higher by a factor of 2.7 solely by working in the United States. This result builds tacitly upon the rural-to-urban place premiums discussed in this paper. In both cases, the poorest Bolivians do not migrate to the extent predicted by place premiums. Migration costs are likely to be relatively high in both cases and difficult to capture with available household data in both countries.

source:http://www.cid.harvard.edu/Economia/GGray%20apr%202009.pdf

The situation in Bolivia:

Bolivia has not attracted European migrants in the 19th

and the 20th centuries to the same degree as

for example Argentina. Rather Bolivia has been sending out migrants, especially during the last

decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21.Argentina has received many migrants from Bolivia, but during the last decade there has been a

large migration to Europe, especially Spain. The colonial past means that in Spain the language

problem is relatively insignificant.While it was previously mostly men who migrated from Bolivia, it is now often women who decide to migrate to other countries looking for work which can improve the living conditions of their families in Bolivia. Many Bolivian women migrate alone and therefore live separated from their families, their children and their partners. A local investigation in the third largest city in Bolivia states that women constitute 67% of the international migration during the past 6 years from that city (Cochabamba).

There are several reasons for this new phenomenon: one is of course the poverty that has worsened during the past decades and the lack of jobs, another is the general discrimination of women in Latin American societies, also in Bolivia, and a third is the effect that globalisation has on the transnational or international labour market, where especially women find jobs as service workers or in homes of families, to substitute the European women who also work outside their homes

Source: http://engerom.ku.dk/kalender/migration2_2011/Migration_and_Latin_America.pdf/

Three pre-concepts regarding the internal migration in Bolivia

∗∗∗

Hubert Mazurek

http://socialsciences.scielo.org/pdf/s_rhcs/v3nse/scs_a02.pdf

(Body part of article only, without summary, introduction and conclusion)

Pre-concept 1: the flows go from west towards east

The reference map in the majority of publications (news media as a scientific publication,

CODEPO, 2004, p. 125) is based on the annual net rate of migration (see map 1). This map

perfectly shows the rupture existing between east (or lowlands) where the net rate is positive, and west, particularly the high plateau region, where the net rate is negative; even though it is necessary to clarify the distribution contained in a series of significant exceptions: neighboring regions and the urban periphery that still keep attracting, a great part of Chaco, Chapare and Beni started to lose their population.

The conclusion about which most of the writers come to is that: “the estimated net rate of migration has allowed us to identify Pando, Santa Cruz, Tarija and Cochabamba, in this established order, as the regions of attraction, insomuch as Potosí, Oruro, Beni, Chuquisaca and La Paz as the ones of losing more population” (CODEPO, 2004, p. 141). That is true in the statistical sense but, does this mean that “there is a movement of the population from west towards east”?

In this first close up view, we will say that there are municipalities that are losing population and

others that are gaining them by means of migration, but it is not said when, how or where these

flows are directed to.

The previous analysis, which is situated at a “stock” level, in other words, the absolute quantity of people who migrate, can not be interpreted without a complementary analysis of “flows” which would indicate the origin and destination of the migrating population. 4

The first element of flow analysis, in this article’s context, is to know where the highland’s migrants go to.

Map 2 shows the amount of immigration from, and to other, municipalities located in the

highlands (municipality in gray color); it also shows the participation of the highland’s immigrants to the total immigration of the municipality.

The majority of those who migrate from the highlands go to… in the highlands and mainly in the

cities. The first destination is south of the region of La Paz and the city of El Alto where more than 80% of the immigrants come from the highlands. Some of the border sites can also be located (Villazón, Tarija, Bermejo or Yacuiba) and the Yungas. The case of Cochabamba and its periphery is also significant when talking about destinations of migration.

The city of Santa Cruz has less immigrants coming from the highlands, than the city of

Cochabamba and that doesn’t represent more than 28% of the total immigration. The rest of the

lowlands receive a low amount of people from the highlands with a proportion almost always less

than 30%.

The lowlands (including the Valley region and the cities of Cochabamba and Sucre) received

149,120 people for a total immigration of 503,141 people (29.6%), meanwhile the highlands

received 165,256 people out of a total of 229,269 immigrants (72%).

Therefore, we can propose a second question: from where do the people migrating to the lowlands come from? Map 3 answers this question. It is about the origin of the population that migrates towards the region of Santa Cruz.

This region attracts very few from the highlands, but from three different origins:

• The cities: La Paz, Cochabamba, the peripheries of these cities (except for El Alto), and in a

greater proportion the intermediate cities and the capitals of the regions (except for Cobija). 5

• Inside one of the nearby zones of attraction: south of Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Vallegrande

area, Chaco (in these two last cases it is about a migration towards another municipality of the

region)

• Municipalities in Beni.

The pre-concept of a massive migration from west towards east does not seem to be verified;

migration of nearness or cultural migration, in the sense of a migration in the same cultural zone,

seems to be the most adequate rule. The most important migration remains in the nearby cities

which allow them to keep a cultural and economic link with their place of origin. It is an important feature of internal migration which has been maintained for several decades.

At this stage of reasoning, it is important to analyze if this cultural component (which will be taken up again at the end of this publication) is a common feature to all migration in Bolivia, particularly of migration towards cities which represents the greatest proportion.

For this purpose, we have analyzed the origin of migration from municipalities towards the 4 main cities in Bolivia: El Alto, La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, as shown in map 4. These maps show a result of the population who have moved from their place of residence in the last 5 years. The circles show the amount of the population, an absolute result, who has migrated towards or from the corresponding city. The municipalities in a lighter gray color have a negative result of migration, while the ones in a darker gray color have a positive result.

We are able to observe four behaviors of migration towards cities which correspond to very

different cultural models:

• La Paz is a city with a negative result, mainly due to employment issues and the impossibility

of a geographical growth in the urban zone. There is a small zone of attraction remaining, to

the north of Lake Titicaca (the Quechua part) but La Paz continues to lose its population. The

emigrant’s destination is mainly the big cities of the country, and particularly El Alto due to

the phenomenon of its proximity, and Santa Cruz due to the economic attraction for

professionals. 51% of emigrants from La Paz go to three cities: El Alto, Santa Cruz and

Cochabamba. 7

• El Alto, a neighboring city, shows an opposite behavior. This city loses a very small

population (18% of the total of migrants) and attracts very few from outside of its zone of

immediate influence: south of the city of La Paz, and particularly the surroundings of Lake

Titicaca. The attraction or emigration towards other regions is represented by no more than

28% of the total of emigrants. Migration towards El Alto corresponds to a case of conformity

of a very structured cultural and economic basin, where we know that mobility is often more

important than definitive migration. A great proportion of the population still has double

residency, in their community of origin (maintaining agricultural activity) as well as in the

city (opportunity of new ways of activity).

• Cochabamba has always been a city of transition and map 3 confirms this behavior. The city

attracts the population from neighboring municipalities (peripheries of the cities, south of the

region, west of Oruro and north Potosí), mainly from the highlands and the Valley zone, and

loses population towards the lowlands. The migratory result for Cochabamba is almost invalid

(-9,060 people which is 8% of the volume of migration); losing 28,396 (27% of the total of

migrants) towards the lowlands and the Valley, gaining 20,171 people (19%) from the

highlands. It has a double behavior, as mediator between El Alto and Santa Cruz, where there

exists the conformity of a basin of migration of proximity associated with a city to city

emigration.

• Santa Cruz also has this basin of migration, but losing population towards it and not attracting

from it. The result of migration is important (54,207 people which is 30% of the total of

migrants) and the immigration comes mainly from the capital cities of this region.

Immigration from rural areas is very limited; on the contrary, Santa Cruz has a tendency of

losing population towards its own rural zone. 50% of immigration comes from seven cities:

La Paz, Cochabamba, Sucre, Trinidad, Oruro, Camiri, Montero; practically all the negative

result corresponds to an emigration towards other municipalities of the region of Santa Cruz

(Cotoca, La Guardia, San Ramón, San Carlos, Warnes, etc.) and … in the city of El Alto

(result of -758 people or 23% of migrants between Santa Cruz and El Alto).

In conclusion to this first part, it could be said that there is no real surprise: migration does not

follow a flow model from west towards east, but instead it responds to three well known

components in the study of migration: migration of proximity, most important flows from and

towards cities (principle of gravity) and attraction based on culture with conformation of basins of migration which can have more or less cultural or economic importance.

Long distance rural migration is of less importance; on the contrary migration tends to reinforce

urban poles of proximity. However there is a long distance urban migration – urban that represents the highest proportion of movement. The interpretation of these two phenomenon, still not well known, leads us to suppose that there is a migration by stage, from rural towards the nearest urban pole, and in a second stage a migration of greater reach towards a big city or a colonization zone.

What should be highlighted is the conformity of regions or basins of migration in various

geographical zones that does not always have to do with definitive migration. Multi residence is a common phenomenon in Bolivia, which allows people to have a remunerated activity in the city while maintaining a link with their community of origin and agricultural activities. Such is the case of the surroundings of Lake Titicaca towards El Alto, from Chaco towards Santa Cruz, or from the mining zones of Oruro and Potosí.

Pre-concept 2: The pattern of distribution of the population has changed and everybody lives in the lowlands

This pre-concept arises from the discourse about the major axis of the population of La Paz/El Alto – Cochabamba – Santa Cruz, taken up again by and being inside of public policies, particularly in national policies of territorial law (MDSP, 2001). At this level there is confusion between the structural axis of the four major cities and the traditional axis of territorial occupation. This traditional axis (see map 5) is structured around the inter-Andean Valley zone, from Lake Titicaca towards Villazón/Bermejo. The central axis (La Paz – Santa Cruz) has a dynamic due to the presence of big cities; however the weakness of the communication system (particularly the old road Cochabamba – Santa Cruz) leaves empty locations between these cities. The real dynamic of the lowlands is in the city of Santa Cruz and not in the rest of the territory (Santa Cruz city’s population represents 56% of the population of the region, or 40% of the population of the regions of Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz and Tarija).

On the contrary, the traditional axis shows a continuity of locations of territorial occupation which is reinforced by new axes of communication, La Paz – Tarija, nowadays it is almost fully asphalted.

The diagram of road integration allows us to think that this traditional axis can be reinforced by

priority exchanges towards neighboring countries.

The territorial occupation has not changed significantly during the course of the last century in spite of the strong dynamic from the city of Santa Cruz and of the intermediate cities that have appeared in its periphery. The dynamic of connectivity in the Bolivian region does not leave space to think about a profound modification of this outline but instead its reinforcement, in the field of international integration. However, the demographic dynamics and the observed flows of migration 9 let us also think that urban polarization and the settlements concentrated along these axes present a risk to the territorial equilibrium of Bolivia.

Pre-concept 3: Migration of the poor

Finally, the great idea of migration is that the population moves in order to get better work

opportunities, particularly for the poor who “have nothing to lose”. We have wanted to prove this hypothesis with the question: Where does the population from the poorest municipalities go to? Map 6 gives us this information: emigration from municipalities that have more than 50% of their population in a situation of homelessness, in other words, extreme poverty. Emigration is destined to the biggest cities (mainly El Alto and Sucre) and some “opportunity” zones such as colonization zones (Yungas, Chapare and north of Santa Cruz), the border cities or

mining centers. However, the amount of emigrants from the poor municipalities is minimal

compared to the total emigration in Bolivia shown in diagram 1.

Emigrants from the poorest municipalities represent 12.8% of the total of emigrants at a national level. This represents 1.1% of the total population while the total of emigrants represents 8.8% with a small variation between regions.

The majority of emigrants from poor zones migrate within their region or to the surroundings of the neighboring region: the majority is in Chuquisaca and La Paz, very few in the lowland regions; only 4.9% of the emigrants who reach Santa Cruz come from poor municipalities.

Well then, it is true that the main motivation of migration is to improve living conditions and to find an activity that will let this happen; however, the image that a population have of improving their lives does not always have to do with a certain image of development linked to the means.

Migration within the cultural territory has a strong feature, and added to this are the difficulties of finding the necessary resources for a long distance migration (reserved, as the CODEPO’s study has shown, to people with a higher level of education).

Migration Patterns in Bolivia

Essence of article (without tables, graphs and references)

http://www.iisec.ucb.edu.bo/papers/2001-2005/iisec-dt-2002-05.pdf

Rural-Urban Migration in Bolivia:

Advantages and Disadvantages

by

Lykke E. Andersen

Institute for Socio-Economic Research

Universidad Católica Boliviana

La Paz, Bolivia

(15 February 2002)

Summary:

This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of rural-urban migration, and shows that the costs of increased urbanization (crime, pollution, congestion, etc) in Bolivia are rather small compared to the costs experienced in other Latin American countries. The benefits, on the other hand, may be large. Encouraging rural-urban migration may be one of the cheapest ways of reducing poverty in Bolivia because it is so much cheaper to provide basic services like electricity, piped water, schools, and health services to people when they are gathered in towns or cities. In addition, economies of scale in the cities bring economic opportunities and increase people’s income.

“The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus

rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.”

Karl Marx, the Communist Manifesto, 1848

1. Introduction

Rapid rural-urban migration is often perceived as a problem in developing countries (e.g. Todaro 1989, Ruel et al 1998), but this paper will argue that in Bolivia it may instead be a solution to many of the country’s problems. The main problem in Bolivia is the persistently high level of poverty, especially in rural areas. Urban poverty rates seem to have fallen by about 10 percent over the past decade from slightly over 50 percent by the beginning of the 1990s to slightly under 50 percent in the late 1990s (e.g. Antelo 2000; World Bank 2000). Rural poverty rates, on the other hand, have fallen much less and were still above 80 percent in 1999 (World Bank 2000).

The main reason for the high rural poverty levels is the low level of productivity, which is associated with a lack of basic services, such as health services, education, electricity, piped water, and road access. One of the reasons that these basic services are lacking in rural Bolivia is that the rural population is scattered over vast areas of mountainous or forested terrain. Bolivia’s population density is only about 8 persons per square kilometer, which is among the lowest in the world. This makes it very expensive to extend basic services to everybody. The only feasible way to extend basic services to almost all Bolivians is to make them move to locations where it is possible to deliver these services at a reasonable cost. This means urbanization.

Section two of this paper shows that Bolivia’s geography, its historical background, and its distinct ethnic populations make rural-urban migration a much smaller problem in Bolivia than in many other developing countries.

Section three discusses some of the major costs of urbanization, and shows that the problems associated with urban growth in Bolivia appear to be much smaller than in many other Latin American countries.

Section four discusses the reasons for migration, using people’s own stated reasons from household surveys. Migrants are grouped according to the reasons for migration, and the situation and performance of each group of migrants is analyzed in detail.

Section five discusses the difference between good and bad types of migration, and suggests policies that can help encourage good migration and discourage bad migration.

Section six concludes.

2. Migration patterns in Bolivia

Bolivia can be divided into three distinct regions: the highlands, the valley region, and the lowlands. These three regions have very different climates and vegetation and they attract different types of people. From pre-Columbian times till now, Aymara people have dominated the highlands, while the Quechua-speaking Incas dominate the valley region. The lowland region was originally sparsely inhabited by a number of smaller rainforest tribes, but now has a relatively large population of European descent. Even by 1997, less than 4 percent of people in the lowland and valley regions spoke Aymara (Urquiola et al 2000), indicating the low mobility of people, at least from the highlands to the lowlands.

Each of the three regions has an urban center. El Alto and La Paz in the highlands mainly attract migrants from the rural highlands. Cochabamba in the valley region provides an urban magnet that can easily compete with the country’s capital. Tarija is also a rapidly growing valley city due to the natural gas boom in the department of Tarija. Finally, Santa Cruz in the lowlands has been growing faster than any other city in Bolivia during the last 50 years (see Table 1).

The existence of several competing urban magnets in Bolivia implies that no one city has yet reached mega-city dimensions. It also means that, in contrast to most other developing countries, the largest city in the country is losing its supremacy. In 1950, La Paz – El Alto accounted for almost 40 percent of the urban population in Bolivia. By 2001 that percentage had dropped to 32 percent. In a cross-country empirical investigation on the optimal degree of urban concentration (given income levels and country size), Henderson (2001) shows that the degree of urban concentration is satisfactory in Bolivia. This is in contrast to most other Latin American countries, which have excessive degrees of concentration (Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay). Thus, as long as Bolivia keeps urbanizing in a decentralized manner, as it has been doing during the last 50 years, Bolivia is unlikely to suffer from excessive urban concentration and mega-city problems.

The distribution of migrants across several urban centers means that the inflow of migrants into each city is manageable. Table 2 compares the level of basic services in the 10 major cities in Bolivia (the nine department capitals plus El Alto) with the situation in the remaining 301 municipalities. While the 10 cities only manage to provide for all basic needs for about 46 percent of the population, the remaining municipalities are doing considerably worse. Among the poorest half of the remaining municipalities virtually the whole population (98 percent) are classified as having unsatisfied basic needs. More than 95 percent of the population in the 10 biggest cities have electricity installed in their houses and 84 percent have piped water. Sanitation systems cover more than half the cities’ populations, while they are rare outside the 10 major cities. One of the reasons that basic needs are better provided for in the cities is that it is much cheaper to provide these services when people are concentrated in cities.

The decentralization law in Bolivia requires that federal funds are distributed according to the number of inhabitants in each municipality. This means that the expenditure per capita on basic services is very similar across all municipalities, but the funds clearly have a much larger impact in the cities. Another reason is that only the main cities manage to collect significant local tax revenues to augment the federal transfers. In 1997, the three departments on the Central Axis (La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz) collected 83.2 percent of all municipal taxes, leaving only 16.2 percent to the remaining six departments. Within the three rich departments about three quarters of tax income was raised in the four municipalities containing the main cities (MDSP 2000). Thus, four municipalities collected about 63 percent of all municipal taxes, while the remaining 307 municipalities together collected only 37 percent.

The concentration of tax revenues is a strong indication of a concentration of profitable activities, which in turn is evidence of economies of urbanization as well as agglomeration externalities. This suggests that productive activities will benefit from further urbanization and that the average costs of providing basic services will fall with further urbanization.

3. Costs of rural-urban migration

The costs of urbanization that people are generally worried about include increased crime, increased pollution, congestion, loosening of family bonds, and loss of traditional cultural practices and values.

Crime

In Bolivia, violent crime is mainly connected to drug-trafficking in rural areas. The crime rate in large cities is lower in Bolivia than in any other of the Latin American countries where data is available, except Chile (Gaviria & Pagés 1999, Table 4). Across Latin American countries there is little evidence that higher urbanization ratios should lead to more crime. If anything, the opposite seems to be the case (See Figure 1, the correlation is –0.25). Guatemala has one of the lowest urbanization ratios in Latin America and at the same time one of the highest crime victimization rates, while Uruguay has one of the highest urbanization levels and the lowest crime rate.

While crime rates generally are substantially higher in cities larger than 1 million than in cities with less than 1 million inhabitants, this is only marginally so in Bolivia. Gaviria & Pagés (1999) show that the crime victimization rate in medium sized cities (100.000 – 1 million inhabitants) in Bolivia is 33.94 while it is 35.48 in large cities (more than 1 million inhabitants). The admittedly limited empirical evidence on crime in Bolivia and Latin America thus suggests that crime is not presently a large problem in Bolivia and that the crime rate will not necessarily increase with increased urbanization.

Pollution

Since pollution is not perceived as a major problem in Bolivia, there are hardly any studies on pollution in Bolivia and very little quantitative data to base an analysis on. Pollution of rivers is likely to be the main problem in Bolivia. Most sewage is released directly into the river system without any treatment. This means that river water is certainly not usable for drinking after the river has passed a main city, and it is not attractive for most other uses either. The lack of access to clean drinking water is mainly a problem in rural communities and small towns where the provision of clean water may be deficient both in quality and quantity. The lack of access to clean water is one of the main causes of excessive child mortality.

Urban air pollution problems in Bolivia are limited to the most congested avenues in the major cities, and it probably has no measurable effect on public health.

The main environmental problems mentioned in relation to Bolivia are usually rural and include deforestation due to agricultural expansion (e.g. Kaimowitz, Thiele & Pacheco 1997), soil erosion due to inappropriate agricultural techniques (e.g. Ellis-Jones & Mason 1999), pollution from mining operations (e.g. Evia & Molina 1997), mercury pollution of rivers due to gold mining (e.g. Maurice-Bourgoin et al 1999), and dumping of precursor chemicals (lime, sodium carbonate, sulfuric acid and kerosene) used in the processing of coca (e.g. Armstead 1992).

Congestion

Congestion in many Latin American cities is a serious problem with commute times being several times higher than necessary, even though car ownership rates are still very low compared to Europe and United States.

In 1980 the number of cars per person in European cities like Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Stuttgart, and Paris varied between 0.23 and 0.43 (Thomson & Bull 2001). Even 20 years later, the car ownership rate in Bolivian cities remain substantially lower. In La Paz and Santa Cruz the car ownership rate is at most 0.08, while in Cochabamba it is at most 0.10.

In Bolivia congestion is mainly a problem in La Paz, which is located on steep mountain sides with little room for road expansions and parking lots. The natural geographical restrictions are obvious to the citizens of La Paz and El Alto who normally use public transportation to get to work, even if they do own a car themselves. The very efficient and very extensive public transportation system together with people’s restraint in using their own cars for work commutes limits the congestion problem. As the city grows and people become richer the use of private cars is likely to go up, however, and congestion could quickly become an unbearable problem. This has to be averted with incentives that make public transportation relatively more attractive and the use of private cars less attractive. Taxes on private cars and gasoline are very helpful to reduce congestion and pollution externalities as well as for raising revenues for improving infrastructure and subsidizing public transportation.

Santa Cruz, which is by far the most rapidly growing city in Bolivia, enjoys the advantage of a flat geography. At the same time it is organized in concentric rings which makes even rapid expansion relatively organized and commutes relatively easy.

Cultural change

Probably one of the most important negative implications of rural-urban migration in Bolivia is the diminishment of traditional indigenous cultures in Bolivia. When migrating to one of the main urban centers, people tend to adjust their habits and belief systems, if not immediately, then at least over a generation or two. These changes include changes in religion, changes in clothing, changes in ceremonies, changes in sexual habits, etc. These changes are not necessarily negative, though. Rural, indigenous people in Bolivia tend to live in a state of extreme poverty with very high levels of child mortality and a lack of access to most basic services such as electricity, piped water, schools, and health services. They have few economic opportunities besides subsistence farming and mining.

Due to the division of plots between children, many land holdings, especially in the highlands, have become too small to support a family and land degradation is a serious problem in many areas. This situation does not seem to be improving much over time. It is clearly necessary for some of the young people in the rural highlands to leave agriculture, because there is simply not enough agricultural land to support them. They have two main options. One is to move to the rural lowlands, where land is more abundant and forest can be cleared to create even more agricultural land. The other option is to move to a city and try a new style of life. Critics of rural-urban migration often assume that migrants have to give up the good features of their old culture and adopt the bad features of city life. This appears to be quite an illogical assumption. Migration, and change in general, allows some choices that a small, stable, and static society doesn’t. Presented with these new choices, it seems more likely that people would adopt good features and reject bad features, rather than vice versa. One example of the bad-feature-assumption is highlighted in the following quote from Villarreal (1998):

“The process of urbanization and the increasing influences of western cultural precepts on many population groups, but especially the young, are seen to be responsible for the breakdown of traditional customs. In this sense, the increase in premarital sexuality and the increase in unmarried teenage pregnancy is seen by many authors as a consequence of the introduction of "western" values and ways of conduct, which expand more easily in the urban context and through the media available in this context.”

However, in virtually every developing country in the world, including Bolivia, the rate of teenage pregnancy is substantially higher in rural areas than in urban areas. In Bolivia, about 22 percent of rural teenagers below 20 have been pregnant at least once, while this is only the case for about 15 percent of urban teenagers (Villarreal 1998). In rural areas these teenage pregnancies tend to be more socially accepted, however. Indeed in some Andean communities, the custom of serviñacu is applied as a sort of trial period before marriage (about one year) to prove the fitness of the couple, fertility being one core aspect.

Thus, pregnancy is sometimes a precondition for marriage (Balán 1996). In general, people would not move if they didn’t expect that it would improve the situation for themselves or their children, so migration is certainly privately beneficial. As we have seen above, migrants do not seem to impose significant negative externalities on the host cities. More likely, migrants bring positive benefits to the cities, as they contribute to a critical mass of consumers and a pool of cheap labor. At the same time they reduce the pressure on the environment and the degradation of agricultural land and forest.

One real problem may be, however, that it is the most educated and most able persons that migrate from rural to urban areas, leaving behind very weak rural communities composed of elderly and uneducated people who are unable to fight poverty effectively. This problem is equivalent to the problem of brain drain from developing countries. While both types of migration contribute to overall growth and development by employing human resources where they are most productive, it also contributes to an increase in the disparities of living standards between the source regions and the destinations of the migrants.

Remittances from family members who have moved might help those left behind, but according to household survey data in Bolivia such remittances are not common. Less than 10 percent of rural households receive transfers from family members in other parts of the country. For those that do receive transfers from family members, however, these transfers tend to account for an important part of total household income – on average 33 percent.

4. Rural-urban migration analyzed by reason for migration

The 1999 MECOVI survey covering both rural and urban households in Bolivia contains a section on migration. The survey covered 13,031 persons and weights were provided to make estimates for the whole Bolivian population. We will use this data to discuss the reasons for migration in Bolivia and to try to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ types of migration.

According to the survey, 9.0 percent of the population (or approximately 722,621 persons) moved within the previous 5 years. Out of these 243,301 were rural-urban migrants, and these are the ones we will focus on in the following. Table 3 shows the reasons they stated for leaving their previous rural residence in favor of their new urban residence. The reasons for migration naturally divide the migrants into different groups. Let us have a closer look at the three large groups: Those who moved to look for job, those who moved to receive education, and those who moved for family reasons.

Job-seeking rural-urban migrants

A little less than a fifth said they migrated from rural to urban areas in order to look for work. They seem to have been quite successful at that in the sense that only 4.8 percent of them were still looking for work the week before the survey. The average monthly labor income of those who worked was Bs. 1080. This is almost the same as the Bs. 1092 that the average urban worker receives. This is quite impressive considered the fact that the migrants have significantly less education. None of the migrants have a university degree, for example. The empirical evidence thus shows that the migrants who moved to a city to look for work were generally successful in finding one. Even though most jobs were informal, they were reasonably well paid compared to urban workers in Bolivia in general, and more than four times better paid than rural workers were.

Education seeking rural-urban migrants

More than a quarter of all rural-urban migration is explained by the need for education facilities. Table 4 shows that more than three-quarters of this group of migrants did attend school in 1999. Around 40 percent of these attended primary school, while 60 percent received more advanced education (secondary education, higher education, or adult education) while 14.1 percent of all urban workers do.

Migrants moving for family reasons

About half of all rural-urban migrants moved for family reasons, making this by far the most important explanation. This is mainly because when the family head decides to move, the rest of the family normally follows. The size of this category is quite important because it may cover a lot of less desirable migration, as will be discussed in the following section. Table 5 takes a closer look at the sub-group of rural-urban migrants who moved for family reasons (171,797 persons).

Table 5 shows that 58.7 percent of the rural-urban migrants who moved for family reasons where children of the head of household. These are presumably not problematic migrants as they are young and can easily adjust to the new life style and take advantage of the better education opportunities. In addition, they live with their parents and thus receive family support. This leaves 41.3 percent who are potentially ‘bad’ migrants, since they have no particular reason for moving to the city and they are relatively old and may experience significant adjustment problems. Out of these 49.7 percent had a job in the week before the 10 interview, so presumably they have overcome any initial problems they may have had finding urban employment.

This leaves 23,370 potentially ‘bad’ rural-urban migrants. About these we know the following:

• The average age is 41 years with a distribution as shown in Figure 2. Those who are above 30 are more likely to have difficulties adjusting to the new urban life style, but the young people may also be at risk since they don’t live with their immediate parents but rather with more distant relatives or non-relatives. They are likely to receive less education than if they were the biological children of the head of household (e.g. Andersen 2001) and may be more likely to be forced to work at an early age.

• Almost forty percent of the potentially ‘bad’ migrants did not learn Castellano as their first language, and may therefore experience some language problems in their new urban environment.

• 71.8 percent of them belong to one of the ethnic minorities.

• 27 percent don’t know how to read and write, which must be considered a major disadvantage and a potential problem. Two thirds have no or only the most basic education.

• 73.2 percent are women.

Table 6 shows that 70.6 percent of these migrants with potential problems are housewives and another 16.0 percent are retired. The average monthly per capita household income for these potentially ‘bad’ migrants were 469 Bs. which compares quite favorably to the national average of 360 Bs. and very favorably to the rural average of 140 Bs.

While these income measures are supposed to measure all income, both monetary and non-monetary, it is notoriously difficult to compare incomes between rural and urban areas, because the costs of living differ so much. In rural areas, for example, school dues can sometimes be paid in off-season labor instead of cash. Since the place of work usually coincides with home, rural people don’t spend as much money on commuting as urban people do. Rural teenagers don’t spend money on movies and video games since the option is simply not available, and hardly any rural people feel deprived because they don’t have access to a computer with Internet connection.

5. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ rural-urban migration

Many people instinctively find rural-urban migration wrong and would prefer to improve the conditions for poor rural people at their location in order to induce them to stay in the countryside. A good example is the Bolivian NGO “Fundación Pueblo” which has initiated several programs to help the rural population. One of their programs is an education program with family-boarding. The idea is that children who do not live near a school can live with a host family in the nearest town and attend school intensively 5 days a week and then stay at home with their own family during the weekend. In that way the children are secured a decent basic education while their families are not required to migrate for that purpose. Such a scheme looks very promising. It does not necessarily reduce migration, but it provides a mechanism with which to separate those who really want to migrate in order to increase their opportunities from those who have to migrate to improve the opportunities for their children at the expense of their own opportunities and life style. Rural children who have received decent basic education are very likely to want to migrate to a bigger city in order to receive more education, so in that way migration may be encouraged by this rural education scheme. This is quite desirable. The undesirable aspect of migration is when entire families have to move to cities in order to secure decent education for the children. The adult family members who usually have little or no education are not well equipped for urban employment and the transition from a rural to an urban life style is considerably more difficult for them than for young people seeking education.

It is important to separate desirable rural-urban migration from undesirable, and find mechanisms to encourage the former and discourage the latter. The family-boarding education scheme discussed above may be a good example of such a mechanism, and it deserves wider application and a thorough investigation into the costs and benefits. The conclusion of this analysis of rural-urban migration is that there is a small group of recent migrants who are relatively old, have little or no education, do not work, and did not move for his/her own personal reasons. These characteristics imply that the migrants may have little to offer the urban community and they may thus contribute to undesirable urbanization. Personally they may also experience considerable psychological and cultural problems due to the dramatic change in life style, which they are not well equipped to deal with. These vulnerable migrants constitute about 10 percent of all rural-urban migrants.

However, on average their economic situation, as measured by average monthly per capita household income, is substantially better than the average in rural areas, and even better than the national average. Since even the worst group of migrants we could identify is relatively well off by Bolivian standards, we must conclude that rural-urban migration is not much of a problem in Bolivia.

6. Conclusions and recommendations

This paper has shown that rural-urban migration is not much of a problem in Bolivia, neither for the migrants nor for the host cities. By encouraging rural-urban migration with sensible policies, it may be possible to reduce several of the problems facing Bolivia.

First, basic needs such as electricity, piped water, schools, and health services are not available for a large part of the rural population, and they cannot be made available due to the extremely high costs of extending these services to all rural communities. In urban areas, these public services can be provided much more efficiently and at a much lower cost per person (e.g. Andersen & Nina 2001).

Second, agricultural land in the highlands is severely degraded and cannot support the present size of the rural population (e.g. Morales et al 2000). Many young farmers would like to sell their small plots, but cannot do so because they do not have formal title to the land. Rather than just abandoning their land, they choose to stay with the one limited asset that they do have. By giving land titles to all informal landowners, the land market would become much more liquid and many small farmers trapped on their little plot of land could sell and facilitate a consolidation and modernization of agriculture in the highlands. If the excess rural population in the highlands left the region, it would allow those who remained to increase their standard of living through more optimal farm sizes.

Third, public forests in the valleys and lowlands are threatened by the expansion of agriculture (e.g. Pacheco 1998). Encouraging rural-urban migration would relieve some of this pressure, which ought to please environmentalists. If Bolivia wants to develop the image of a bio-diversity haven and an eco-tourism paradise that it certainly has the natural advantages to do, it is important that these environmental assets are protected from the expansion of agriculture.

The following are examples of appropriate policies to encourage beneficial migration: First, cities need to be capable of providing basic services to new arrivals. This means efficient city planning, especially in new and rapidly growing neighborhoods. The location of streets and public areas need to be planned and these plans need to be available to the public, so that they can build their houses in sensible places. Roads, electricity and piped water need to be extended to new neighborhoods quickly to make the plots attractive and a good investment for new arrivals. The delivery of these services do not necessarily need to be subsidized, but there need to be public administrative support for the implementation of effective services, and bureaucratic hurdles need to be eliminated.

Second, the funds distributed from federal to municipal governments through the Ley de Participación Popular should be allocated not only on the basis of the population size at last census, but also according to population growth rates. Municipalities that attract a lot of migrants have much higher needs for funds to invest in expanding public services than municipalities with stable populations. It is important that successful municipalities with relatively favorable economic opportunities for their inhabitants are not punished with disproportionately small federal transfers.

Third, boarding schools of various types may provide a good option for encouraging ‘good’ migration and preventing ‘bad’ migration. There are several examples of highly successful boarding schools in Bolivia, and they deserve more widespread application.