Archive of SID Iranian Journal of Economic Research Vol. 16, No. 46, Spring 2011, pp. 97-113 Estimation of Rural-Urban Migration in Iran (An Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag Approach) Ali Reza Karbasi and Seyed Mohammad Fahimi-Fard Received: 2008/05/22 Accepted: 2009/06/22 Rural inhabitants’ perception of better life changes when observing the success of other people, and hope to emulate their success. They know that University degree can lead to a higher expected income. In fact urbanism has some benefits but the costs (pollution, congestion, and crime) are also pervasive in developing countries. In order to better understand the problem, and examine policy measures for controlling its negative externalities, it is of importance to study and analyze the factors which may affect migration. Therefore, in this study we investigated this important issue with emphasis on the effect of rural literacy level on rural-urban migration by using an Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model utilizing time-series data related to the years 1959-2005 in Iran. Results indicate that in long term, rural literacy level has the most effect on this function. It was also found that, 1% increase in rural wage, urban wage, rural value added and rural literacy level can cause 0.25% decrease, 0.32% increase, 0.16% decrease and 0.32% increase in migrant’s number, respectively.

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