Rebecca Pietrelli is an economist in the Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), since 2014. Before joining FAO, she was a research fellow at Rome Tre University within the FOODSECURE research project. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from La Sapienza University of Rome and an M.Sc. in Development Economics from Sussex University. Her main interests involve the economics of migration; the effect of conflict; indicators of resilience, vulnerability, and food security; and subjective indicators. She has experience in household survey design and implementation in Sub Saharan Africa.

Session V - Migration and Development - 27/10/2017 9:30 - 11:30

Internal migration and vulnerability to poverty in Tanzania

This paper investigates whether migration reduced household vulnerability to poverty for a panel of households from the Kagera region in Tanzania over the period 2004-2010

The potential endogeneity of migration is controlled by both matching methods and an exogenous variation: a severe drought in 2008-09 affected the areas of the country with a bimodal rain season, but not those with a unimodal rain season.

Migration reduced vulnerability to basic needs and to food consumption poverty for families which experienced migration to unimodal regions. The evidence supports the view that migration served as an effective risk management strategy for households.

Other speakers in this session

Maria Franco Gavonel (University of Oxford)
Effects of Internal Migration of Youth’s Cognitive and Psychosocial Skills in Ethiopia, India, Peru,
and Vietnam

Jena Farai (University of Sussex)
Internal Migration and Employment in Zimbabwe

Kashi Kafle (IFAD)
Does relative deprivation induce migration? Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa