TY - BOOK ID - 138278153 TI - Risk Sharing and Internal Migration AU - De Weerdt, Joachim AU - Hirvonen, Kalle PY - 2013 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Anthropology KW - Consumption KW - Inequality KW - Institutions KW - Insurance KW - Internal migration KW - Labor Policies KW - Population Policies KW - Poverty Reduction KW - Risk KW - Tracking data KW - Africa UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:138278153 AB - Over the past two decades, more than half the population in rural Tanzania migrated within the country, profoundly changing the nature of traditional institutions such as informal risk sharing. Mass internal migration has created geographically disperse networks, on which the authors collected detailed panel data. By quantifying how shocks and consumption co-vary across linked households, they show how migrants unilaterally insure their extended family members at home. This finding contradicts risk-sharing models based on reciprocity, but is consistent with assistance driven by social norms. Migrants sacrifice 3 to 7 percent of their very substantial consumption growth to provide this insurance, which seems too trivial to have any stifling effect on their growth through migration. ER -