Abstract
In this paper, we examine the impacts of migration on household-level farm production decisions, including labor allocation, crop diversification, and agricultural and total household incomes, using household survey data from Albania. Results indicate that increased international migration leads to a reduction in household labor allocated to agricultural activities and crop diversity, but has no impact on agricultural income. However, it does lead to higher total incomes. These findings suggest that international migration does not strengthen household agricultural production but instead facilitates the transition away from agriculture. We also consider the effect on agricultural outcomes of the network of adult children who have left home but are still living in Albania. The effect of this local migration on agriculture is the opposite: larger networks lead to higher agricultural incomes and greater agricultural labor per capita.
Abstract
Cet article se penche sur les impacts de la migration sur les décisions de production agricole des ménages, y compris par rapport à l'attribution des tâches, la diversification des récoltes, ainsi que les revenus domestiques agricoles et totaux, en utilisant des données d'une enquête auprès de ménages, en Albanie. Les résultats indiquent que la migration internationale conduit à réduire le temps de travail consacré aux activités agricoles, ainsi qu'à diminuer la diversité des récoltes, mais n'a aucun impact sur le revenu agricole. La migration mène cependant à des revenus globaux plus élevés. Ces résultats suggèrent que la migration internationale ne renforce pas la production agricole au niveau des ménages, mais facilite plutôt la transition vers des activités économiques autres que l'agriculture. Nous considérons également l'effet sur l'activité agricole du départ du foyer de jeunes adultes qui restent cependant en Albanie. Cette migration locale produit l'effet opposé à celui de la migration internationale : plus grands sont les réseaux internes, plus les revenus agricoles et le temps de travail agricole par habitant augmentent.
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Notes
See, for example, Mines and de Janvry (1982), Durand et al (1996) and Taylor et al (1996) for Mexico, and de Brauw and Rozelle (2003) for rural China.
Examples of a positive effect of migration on investments are provided in Lucas (1987) for Southern Africa, Dustmann and Kirchkamp (2001) for Turkey, Woodruff and Zenteno (2001) for Mexico, Black et al (2003) for Ghana and Konseiga (2007) for Burkina Faso.
Examples of this positive relationship are in Stark (1991), Taylor et al (1996), Taylor and Wyatt (1996), de Brauw et al (2003) and Mendola (2004). Rozelle et al (1999) show that remittances accumulated abroad partially compensate for lost labor and allow households to improve their agricultural productivity. However, the net impact is negative as the effect of migration on labor supply more than offset the remittance effect.
Highlighting Albania's dramatic out-migration, we can compare Albania's experience with another high out-migration country, Mexico. Taylor et al (2005) estimate that 16 per cent of Mexican households had a member in the United States in 2002; the OECD (2004) estimated that remittances accounted for just 2.5 per cent of Mexican GDP.
However, de Zwager et al (2005) points out a clear divergence of responses between the migrant and household member receiving the remittance: according to the former, only a marginal share of remittances are invested in agriculture, while based on the latter's response, one half of the investments goes into agriculture activities. The total share of remittances going to investment remains small (de Zwager et al, 2005).
For a full account see Cungu and Swinnen (1997a, 1997b, 1999).
Average farm size has been estimated at 0.9 ha in 1999 (EU PHARE, 2001), and according to ALSMS data it was at 0.7 ha in 2002.
The statistics reported hereafter in this subsection originate from the 2002 ALSMS.
Agricultural income includes both crop and livestock income.
See World Bank (2002) for more detailed information on Albania's agricultural sector.
This section is based largely on Carletto et al (2006).
There was incomplete data on agricultural labor in particular, for both migrant and non-migrant households. However, the same per cent of observations was incomplete for both (12 per cent), and thus we have no reason to suspect bias from this source.
It is possible that past migration experience may still be correlated with the underlying error terms, despite using data on migration from the period 1997–2000. Although a crude indicator, we note that all other coefficients are stable whether or not these variables are included in any of the regressions reported here.
We used the simple sum, since all of the agricultural assets were generally small (including ploughs, carts and other implements); no households owned large agricultural equipment such as combines, and less than 1 per cent owned a tractor.
For this variable, we used the total number of plots with irrigation divided by the commune population; unfortunately, data were not available on the total number of plots without irrigation to get the exact proportion of plots with irrigation.
All regressions were performed using STATA's ivreg2 command, employing the ‘robust’ option to correct for heteroskedasticity. A number of tests of instrument validity are provided using this command, and we report a subset of those here.
Hansen's J statistic was generated, instead of the Sargan statistic as all equations were corrected for heteroskedasticity as noted above.
We also ran orthoganality and redundancy tests not reported here; to ensure that the final specification included only exogenous and non-redundant instruments.
For instance, as previously shown, permanent migration of former household members and Italian experience of current members also reduce labor allocated to agriculture.
Returns from migration to Greece can be expected to be substantially lower than the ones from Italy and further destinations. Also, although we are using lagged migration experienced, we are aware of potential problems of endogeneity of the temporary migration variables. As shown elsewhere (Carletto et al, 2005), temporary migrants to Greece are generally younger and less educated, and they are more likely to work in agriculture, thus suggesting initial lower levels of human and physical assets.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Carlo Azzarri, Paul Winters and Alberto Zezza for useful comments. We are also grateful to Irini Maltsoglou for supporting the analysis of an earlier version of the paper. Finally, we acknowledge the Albania Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) for a fruitful collaboration and granting access to the data.
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Appendices
Appendix A
See Table A1.
Appendix B
See Table A2.
Appendix C
See Table A3.
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McCarthy, N., Carletto, C., Kilic, T. et al. Assessing the Impact of Massive Out-Migration on Albanian Agriculture. Eur J Dev Res 21, 448–470 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2009.12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2009.12