This paper adds to the Ghana migration literature summarized above by offering a novel empirical assessment of the characteristics of Ghanaian migrants, the determinants of migration, and its impact on household welfare by drawing on a recently-assembled, nationally-representative sample of Ghanaian households. The main finding of the paper is that migration is a response to opportunities available to individuals and constraints faced by communities: the incentive to migrate is greatest for more educated individuals from communities with reduced access to education and health services. Households with migrants are better off than households without migrants, but only if the households send migrants to urban areas and are in turn more likely to receive remittances and in larger amounts.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the dataset and provides some descriptive statistics on Ghanaian migrants, Section 3 presents an analysis of migration determinants, Section 4 assesses the impact of migration on welfare, and Section 5 concludes.

# **2. Profile of Ghanaian migrants**

The analysis in this paper is undertaken with a nationally-representative sample of 4,000 Ghanaian households, taken from the 8,687 households which participated in the 2005/06 round of Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 5). 13 households were dropped due to insufficient data, resulting in the final sample of 3,987 households. The survey was administered from September 2005 to September 2006, and the migration and remittances module contained 36 questions about the identity and characteristics of migrants, as well as the amount, frequency, and use of remittances sent back by these migrants. Combining the migration and remittances module with the general GLSS5 survey, it is possible to identify three types of individuals in the data (see Figure 1 for contributions of each group to the population):  _Non-migrants_ : individuals who were present at the time of the survey and who, if ever away from the household, came back more than five years ago and have not left the household since that time. For these individuals, information is available only from the general part of the survey.

 _Return migrants_ : individuals who were away from the household for some time in the last five years but have since returned to the household. For return migrants, information is available both from the migration and remittance module (e.g., duration of migration, amount of remittances sent, education and occupation before migration, etc.) as well as from the general part of the survey (because they were interviewed for the general survey as any other household member). However, it is not guaranteed that the return migrant him/herself answered the questions in the migration and remittances module.

 _Current migrants_ : individuals who were away from the household at the time of the survey. For current migrants, the only information available is that recalled by the interviewed remaining household members because the current migrants themselves were never interviewed. It is possible that these current migrants were interviewed by GLSS staff while in their destination communities, but even if so, they would not be captured as migrants in this dataset.<sup>1</sup> 1 This represents a major qualification to the findings of this paper, as the second-hand information relayed by remaining household members may be incomplete, inaccurate, or out-of-date. The reliance on remaining 3