More than 80 percent of Ghanaian migrants stay in Ghana and among them, 70 percent go to urban areas.<sup>2</sup> The latter is a higher share than reported by previous studies but consistent with the overall pattern in the literature which showed increasing attractiveness of urban areas as migrant destinations over time (Ghana Statistical Service 2000), (Batse 1995). The greater Accra and Ashanti regions attract more than half of all internal migrants and migrants make up a substantial share of the population in these regions.<sup>3</sup> Consistent with previous studies (e.g., Tutu 1995), the southern regions of Ghana—Western, Central, Eastern, greater Accra, Volta, and Ashanti—are the destinations for 88 percent of all internal migrants, while the Northern and the two Upper regions together account for only 5 percent of the total (Figure 2, top left).

The same southern regions account for 70 percent of the country’s population, and migrants have become prominent members of the population in these localities. In Ashanti and Western regions, migrants account for more than 10 percent of the region’s population, while more than 18 percent of the population in Accra is accounted for by migrants (Figure 2, bottom left). If the sample is restricted to individuals 15 years of age or older, these shares rise even more, with 26 percent of the population in Accra and 24 percent of the population in the Ashanti region accounted for by migrants.

More than two-thirds of internal migrants come from the relatively better off southern regions (Ashanti, Central, Eastern, and greater Accra). Although the common perception in Ghana is that a large number of migrants come from the North, the Upper East, Upper West, and Northern regions account for only 10 percent of all internal migrants (Figure 2, top right). This, combined with the fact that most migrants tend to stay within their own region, suggests that the costs of moving—both direct travel costs and the costs of locating and joining a migrant network—represent important barriers to labor mobility in Ghana.<sup>4</sup> This is also consistent with previous evidence which points to distance as a strong deterrent to internal migration in Ghana (Beals, Levy and Moses 1967), (Caldwell 1968).

Even after taking population size into account, northern regions produce migrants at a much lower rate than southern regions. Migrants in the Upper East and Northern regions make up just 3 percent of their populations, while Upper West has a somewhat higher household members for information on migrants also implies that migration of entire households is not captured in the data, although qualitative studies indicate that such migration patterns are very rare (Participatory Development Associates 2009).

2 It is important to note that the urban or rural classification of migrant’s destination is reported by households, whereas the urban/rural classification of origin communities is done by survey administrators (Ghana Statistical Service). Therefore, the two definitions may not always be consistent.

3 The discussion in this and the following paragraphs on migrant destinations must be heavily qualified due to data limitations. The interviewed families knew the location of the migrant only in 61 percent of all cases, and there is a substantial regional variation underlying that average. However, there is no clear regional pattern in the knowledge of the migrant’s location. Across the three agro-ecological zones, the location of the migrant was known 60 percent of the time in the coastal zone, 63 percent of the time in the forest zone, and 56 percent of the time in the savannah. The likelihood of knowing a migrant’s location also does not appear to be correlated with welfare: there is no clear pattern in knowing the location across welfare deciles, although households in the two bottom deciles are the most likely to know the location of their migrant members.

4 Migration networks in Ghana have been found to be a significant determinant of the likelihood of receiving remittances (Adams, Cuecuecha and Page 2008), which is one way of measuring success of migration.

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