Question

One noticeable issue in our society and most developing countries today is the rate at which people (including youths and adults) migrate from the rural to the urban areas. Like a paradox, while the cities (urban areas) are increasing in population, the rural areas are decreasing. Address students of Ghana Technology University College on this issue, as a labour economics consultant. Your discussion should include (but not limited) to the following:

a. Explain the theory that underpins migration from a labour economics perspective .

b. Provide sectoral analysis of migration trends in Ghana

c. Provide some recommendations to government (15 MARKS

Answer 1

(a) Theory and Insights:

Individuals migrate internally or externally for a number of reasons. They travel to look for better job, better and successful life, better education, better businesses, stable economic conditions, job opportunities, escape from war, gain citizenship, death of family member, staying away from social pressure and so on.

Migration has its own benefits and costs. Some of the benefits are that migrants are able to send money home for family growth and development in terms of housing and schooling. Also, the migrants enjoy new opportunities, better economic condition, safer political conditions and many more. Some of the costs components are migrants might not be welcomed in the new location, behavioral problems, educational difficulties, difficulty in funding health care, loss of labor force in the home country and gain of skilled personnel to the foreign country and so on. According to Ravenstein’s Law of migration, one of the principles is that most migrants are rural to urban. This principle seems to apply very well in Ghana. The reason is that most of the migrations that take place within Ghana are from rural to urban centres. It revealed that the majority of the migrants were able bodied youth and majority of them were traders. The migrants' main reason for migrating is to seek employment in the urban centers for better living. The other factor that motivated them to migrate from the rural areas to the urban center was access to good social amenities such as good drinking water, access to good and quality health care (hospital), good roads, good and quality education, access to electricity and entertainment. The migrants indicated that their respective villages lack these basic social amenities. This is because of the lack of employment opportunities, less income sources, poor economic condition, ethnic conflicts, less access to basic public services such as education (being the most reason), poor delivery of energy and water supplies in the rural areas, lack of doctors and healthcare facilities with electricity, water and gas supplies to the urban centers for better living conditions, more access to basic public services, regular water and energy supply provided by urban areas and new income opportunities.

Though on the darker side of rural urban migration, it leads to loss of skilled labor in rural areas, distortion of age and gender balances in rural areas and the serious decline of productivity in the traditional rural sector (As agriculture is one of the most labor-demanding sectors of the economy and this sector lacks productive labor force because of outflow of young and active people). The urban centers on the other hand get cheap labor, which in turn creates opportunities to expand urban sectors such as the industry and the service sector. The urban center is also faced with overpopulation, high crime rates, congestion, and poor delivery of basic services.

(b) Sectoral analysis in migration trends in Ghana: (Reports of trends after 2010 is not public)

1. By Movement - In 2010 nearly 66.0 percent of Ghanaians (65.9%) were nonmigrants, compared to nearly 70.0 percent (69.8%) in 2000. That indicates that a little more Ghanaians were internal migrants in 2010 (34.1%) than in 2000 (30.1%). In both censuses, greater proportion of people moved between regions (inter-regional) than within regions (intra-regional). That implies that internal movements in Ghana are characterized more by long distance movements than short distance movements.
2. Migration Flows between Urban And Rural Areas - Migrants have made more significant contribution to urban than rural population. In total, migrants aged 5 years or older contributed 4,656,959 people to urban population in 2010, made up of 1,904,336 urban to urban migrants and 2,752,623 rural to urban migrants. In other words, 44.5 percent of the urban population aged 5 years or older are migrants who arrived between 2000 and 2010.
3. Distribution by sex - In 2000 there was virtually no gender difference in the proportion of internal migrants in Ghana (30.3% for males and 30.0% for females). In 2010, however, there is a significant difference between male and female proportions of internal migrants with the latter having a slight edge over the former (35.0% versus 33.2%). That means in relative 23 terms, in internal movements females were a little more mobile than males in 2010. Yet whereas females were significantly dominant in intra-regional movements (16.3% versus 14.0%), their male counterparts were slightly dominant in inter-regional movements (19.2% versus 18.7%). In a sense therefore, in 2010 females were dominant in short distance movements and males in long distance movements.
4. Housing - housing conditions for population aged 5 years and older by migrant status. The table shows that non-migrants are a little more likely than migrants to live in compound houses (56.4% versus 46.1% and 47.5% for inter-regional and intra-regional respectively). On the other hand migrants are more than twice more likely than non-migrants to live in flats/apartments. There are striking differences, however, among the various categories of migrants with respect to tenure arrangements. Non-migrants are far more likely to be owner occupiers than 44 migrants (66.6% versus 48.7% and 41.5% for intra-regional and inter-regional migrants respectively). It is worth noting that even among the migrants owner occupiers constitute the largest proportions.
5. Education - largest proportions of people of all categories of migrants are literate in English and Ghanaian languages together (44.5%, 52.4% and 46.4% for non-migrants, intra-regional migrants and inter-regional migrants respectively). In addition, a reasonable proportion of people are literate in English language (20.0%, 17.4% and 22.0% respectively). That makes English language the commonest means of interaction among migrants in the country, which underscores its place as the national language.about 73.0 percent and 77.1 percent of interregional and intra-regional migrants respectively have at least basic education, only 64.8 41 percent of non-migrants have same. At the basic education level there is very little variation between migrants and non-migrants. There is however, a significant difference between the two categories from the secondary level and above. The difference is more striking at the tertiary level where close to 8.0 percent of both intra-regional and inter-regional migrants have tertiary educations and just 3.4 percent of non-migrants have similar qualification. It appears people do not only move to acquire higher education, but they are also pushed out by it to go and look for jobs that are commensurate with their status.urban migrants are better educated than rural migrants. Between 84.0 percent and 89.0 percent of urban migrants have at least basic education, compared to between 53.0 percent and 64.0 percent of their rural counterparts? Also, among the urban migrants there is virtually no difference in the proportions of intra-regional and inter-regional migrants with basic education (54.8% and 51.9% respectively). There is however, a significant difference at the rural level (50.6% versus 42.5% respectively). The urban-rural difference is more striking at the secondary and tertiary levels. The proportions of migrants who have secondary education in the urban areas are more than twice their rural counterparts’ (22.6% versus 9.5% for intra-regional migrants, and 21.4% versus 8.5% for inter-regional migrants respectively). The urban-rural differences are more than three times at the tertiary level (11.3% versus 3.6% for intra-regional migrants and 10.9% versus 3.0% for inter-regional migrants).

(c) Suggestions to government:

It is suggested that relevant policies should be developed to manage rural-urban migration in. There should be a restrictive policy allowing only a limited number of people to move to the city and offering a reduced number of rural migrants to work in urban areas. Also, rural areas should be equally developed. There should be provision of adequate financial opportunities for farmers, establishment of credit organizations in rural areas, offering long term credits with special discounts and easy loan granting process for rural farmers and business that can have positive effects on rural development and also improvement of rural infrastructure such as roads, energy and water supplies. Government should provide employment for the citizens in the rural areas by building more industries to prevent the rural folks from migrating into the urban centers. Also, private institutions can put up other food processing companies in the rural areas to provide employment for the youth. Extension officers should be sent regularly to the rural areas to educate the farmers on their farming activities for better yields. Finally, the government should provide basic necessities such as housing, education, hospitals, good roads, electricity, good drinking water and others in the rural areas of Ghana.