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