Relationship between Migration and Fertility Decisions in Rural Sectors of LDC’s

This paper investigates how the implication of rural-urban migration for the rural fertility rate in LDCs is influenced by the ways the reward from this migration is generated and utilized by the rural family. It is shown that to maximize the capital stock needed for agricultural transformation parents in the rural sector send the children to the urban sector and invest the resulting capital (generated from remittances and agricultural surplus which would otherwise be consumed by migrating children) for upgrading the production technique. This family migration decision makes the family demand more children when they provide both utility and needed supplies of capital compared to the situation when they provide only utility or both utility and direct labor input to family production. Under the scenario, the rural fertility decision is also linked to different urban parameters. The analysis suggests that different problems of underdevelopment are interrelated and a lopsided attempt to separately cure any one of them might intensify other problems.