PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Zachary Barnett-Howell
AU  - Jeremy Foltz
TI  - Determinants of Migration: Cotton Strikes and Income Shocks in Mali
AID  - 10.3368/le.98.4.082120-0130R
DP  - 2022 Nov 01
TA  - Land Economics
PG  - 700--714
VI  - 98
IP  - 4
4099  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/98/4/700.short
4100  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/98/4/700.full
SO  - Land Econ2022 Nov 01; 98
AB  - How do transitory income shocks affect household migration decisions in low-income countries? We study how income losses from a cotton strike affecting Malian districts differentially changed agricultural household migration choices. The short duration and geographic specificity of the strike allows us to cleanly identify the long-run impact of a sudden change in household income on migration choices. We show that a drop in income precipitated by the strike reduced household migration rates by approximately 32% over a six-year period. A randomized inference placebo test corroborates the validity of our result. We demonstrate that not having cash on hand is a binding constraint to labor migration for poor populations.