Migration to cities in Burkina Faso: Does the level of development in sending areas matter?

The growth of large cities in the developing world is a major concern and many developing countries have developed policies to reduce migration to cities. These policies usually rely on the assumption that improving the quality of life in rural areas and secondary towns will reduce out-migration to cities. While this may at first glance seem a reasonable assumption, very few empirical studies support this view. Using recent longitudinal individual and community-level data on migration and local development, this paper provides new empirical evidence on this question in Burkina Faso. Overall, our results show that, contrary to policy expectations, most components of rural development either have no effect on migration or rather tend to encourage migration to cities.