Migration as a Substitute for Informal Activities: Evidence from Tajikistan

How is migration related to informal activities? They may be complementary since new migrants may have difficulty finding employment in formal work, so many of them end up informally employed. Alternatively, migration and informality may be substitutes since migrants' incomes in their new locations and income earned in the home informal economy (without migration) are an imperfect trade-off. Tajikistan possesses both a very large informal sector and extensive international emigration. Using the gap between household expenditure and income as an indicator of informal activity, we find negative significant correlations between informal activities and migration: the gap between expenditure and income falls in the presence of migration. Furthermore, Tajikistan's professional workers ability to engage in informal activities enables them to forgo migration, while low-skilled non-professionals without post-secondary education choose to migrate instead of working in the informal sector. Our empirical evidence suggests migration and informality substitute for one another.remittances, migration, informal, Tajikistan

Job dissatisfaction and migration: evidence from Tajikistan

Abstract Having a family member migrant reduces not only the labor force participation but also the job satisfaction of those left behind. Migrants’ relatives build their expectations on earnings from migration through received information on the wage distribution in the destination country either from the size of remittances or directly from migrants. If their expected earnings from migration greatly exceed their current wages in the source country, migrant relatives become more dissatisfied with their jobs. Using a simple economic model of job satisfaction and applying both parametric and semiparametric estimations to Tajikistan’s data, as well as with controlling for an endogeneity issue with the variable of interest, we estimate the significantly positive effect of the difference of the expected outside country earnings and current earnings of migrants’ relatives on their job dissatisfaction. A larger gap between what an individual could earn in the migration destination country and what she receives now at her current job in the source country makes that individual unhappier

Migration and Forsaken Schooling in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

Large international earnings differentials negatively impact human capital investments in migrant-origin countries. We find that three Central Asian migrant-sending countries—the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan—are facing a forsaken schooling phenomenon. Once completing their compulsory schooling, young people in these countries are forsaking additional schooling because of opportunities to migrate to high-paying low-skilled jobs in the Russian Federation. The countries face a loss in human capital formation