The Influence of Internal Migration on Male Earnings in Brazil, 1970–2000

This paper deals with the impact of internal migration flows on the earnings of male workers. The availability of jobs and income levels in sending and receiving areas also influence internal population flows. Thus, migration is an endogenous variable that cannot be simply introduced as an exogenous variable when estimating labour outcomes. A methodological approach is developed to introduce migration into our models, dealing with the issue of reverse causality between migration and earnings. We implement this strategy using the 1970–2000 Brazilian Demographic Censuses. Our findings reflect our initial hypothesis, indicating that migration flows have a negative impact on male earnings, when considering cohort size as a factor. A ten percent increase in migration rates would have reduced the wages of competing workers by up to three percent in 2000. These methodological strategies can be applied to other countries that have similar available migration data.