Shocks, Development Policies, and Rural-Urban Migration in Vietnam

Behaviors of migrants towards shocks are worthy to study to understand their reflection on external unexpected events to narrow the gap in the literature of migrations. Besides, rural development policies are believed to help reverse the rural-urban migration. This research paper was aimed at taking these critical points from literature into examination for justifications such as impacts of shocks, rural development interventions, and other determinants on migrants' decision to return and staying duration in the cities with an empirical analysis from the unique Thailand – Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel (TVSEP) data. The estimation results from the two-step Heckman model show that demographic shocks positively affect migrants' decision to return, while social shocks affecting the migrants during the time in the cities are negatively impact their decision to return. In the outcome stage of migration period, the result signifies that economic shocks positively influence migrants' staying period in the cities. Besides, migrants from poor communes with poverty reduction projects are more unlikely to return. This implies that current rural development policies in Vietnam with a goal of poverty reduction might not be attractive or efficient enough to fill the gap between the rural and urban regions