The Contribution of Rural Urban Migration to Migrants’ Economic Development in Tamale

Abstract

Economic development aims at improving the economic and social well-being of people. In essence economic development implies a positive change of persons. Such changes may involve multiple areas including development of human capital, social capital, health, sanitation, water, housing, savings, income and asset ownership. To achieve this, rural people pursue rural to urban migration as a pathway to survival and to improve their well-being. Nonetheless it is commonly believed that rural-urban migration cannot lead to improvements in migrants’ well-being. This study, therefore sought to find out the contribution of rural urban migration to the economic development of the migrants’. In finding out the contributions to the rural migrants’ therefore, the indicators of economic development as named above were divided into three:  social status, economic status and the poverty level of migrants’, and analyzed by Social Status Index (SSI), Economic Status Index (ESI) and the asset based approach of measuring poverty respectively. The research design employed for the study was a descriptive strategy of inquiry. Whiles the communities (4) were purposively selected, the migrants’ were sampled using snowball sampling, thus 30 migrants’/households in each community. Questionnaires were employed to gather primary data. The findings revealed that rural-urban migration contribute to the economic development of migrants’ since the SSI and ESI of migrants’ improved by 54.4% and 64.4% respectively whiles with their asset ownership, the number of migrants’ who had no asset reduced significantly to 5.8% after migration from 61.7% before migration.

Keywords: Rural-urban migration, Migrants’, Economic Development