migration rate of 8 percent (Figure 2, bottom right). However, this is much lower than the double-digit migration rates of the Volta, Central, and Ashanti regions. This suggests that internal migration in Ghana, whether in relative or absolute terms, is primarily a southern region phenomenon. These results are at odds with the commonly held views of Ghanaian migration, which posit that migrants mostly come from the north of Ghana and settle in the south.

Even though migrants tend to come from more urbanized regions, within these regions most migrants originate from rural areas. While 64 percent of the Ghanaian population is rural, 75 percent of migrants come from rural areas. Coming from a rural area also increases the chances that the migrant will go to a rural area, although urban destinations always dominate in absolute terms. Among migrants from rural areas, 33 percent go to another rural location, while less than 17 percent of migrants from urban areas do go to a rural area.<sup>5</sup> This pattern is similar for both men and women, with no substantial differences.

On average, households with migrants have 2 members currently away, but the distribution is highly skewed to the right with the median of 1 and the maximum of 13. The more migrants a household has, the more likely these migrants are to stay away longer and go to urban areas—pointing to the existence and importance of migrant networks. Compared to the average migration duration of 8 years for the entire sample, migrants from households with more than two migrants tend to be away for 9 years, and migrants from household with five or more migrants stay away an average of 10 years. Similarly, the likelihood that a migrant ends up in an urban area increases from 67 percent for households with one or two migrants to 71 percent for households with three or four migrants to 79 percent when five or more household members are away.

Compared to Ghanaians who never migrated, internal migrants are substantially younger, more likely to be male, and less educated. In most cases, differences between current and return migrants with respect to their age, gender, and educational attainments are not significant, and even when they are, these differences are not meaningfully large. However, the same differences between migrants and non-migrants are much more pronounced (Table 1). Consistent with existing evidence (Caldwell 1968), migrants are much more likely to be male: the male-to-female ratio for non-migrants 15 years of age or older of is 0.88 vs. 1.20 for migrants. On average, migrants are five years younger than non-migrants—consistent with evidence in (Caldwell 1968) and (Tutu 1995)—and they are significantly more likely to stop their education after completing primary school, rather than continuing on to secondary and tertiary degrees (Table 1).<sup>6</sup> The primary motivation for Ghanaian migrants is to find work, primarily in the manufacturing sector or in sales, with education and marriage a distant second and third. Taking both return and current migrants into account, working or looking for work is the main reason for migration for more than 47 percent of all migrants. When only migrants 15 years of age or older are taken into account, this share rises to 49 percent. Education

> 5 Just under 4 percent of Ghanaian internal migrants are urban-to-rural migrants. Although this share may seem high, it is actually below those reported in earlier studies of internal migration in Ghana (Batse 1995). 6 Of course, this do not establish a causal link between lower education levels and the likelihood to migrate: migrants could be coming from communities with reduced access to education services, from social groups which are traditionally less likely to send children to school, or the less-educated may be self-selecting into the migrant pool. However, to the extent that higher educational attainment is correlated with increased earnings, Ghanaian migrants appear to be at a disadvantage relative to non-migrants.

5