in age, a finding which also holds in other developing economies (Gindling and Newhouse 2014). Over half of the non-farm self-employment activities are in the retail sector, and about a quarter in other service activities. Most non-farm self-employment activities are small-scale family-run enterprises, with an average of two people working in them. About 80 percent of enterprises only have the owner working in them, 17 percent employ between 2 and 4 individuals, and the remaining 3 percent have 5 or more individuals working in them. Overall, microenterprises account for over 99 percent of private sector establishments in the country. Gindling and Newhouse (2014) report similar patterns regarding the small scale of entrepreneurship activities in a large sample of developing countries with similar income patterns.

Domestic employment opportunities are limited in Bangladesh, as in many developing countries (Farole et al. 2017). As a result, many workers migrate to higher-income countries to access higher-paying employment opportunities. Bangladesh ranked 5th worldwide in the number of citizens overseas, with an estimated 7.8 million people in 2018 (Ahmed and Bossavie 2021). The incidence of emigration is also high in relative terms. About 15 percent of the total working-age male population (ages 15-64) was currently or in the past employed overseas as of 2018.<sup>4</sup> Oil-exporting GCC countries are by far the main destinations for these temporary migrants, followed by Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. More than 750,000 workers have emigrated annually (pre-COVID), and the magnitude of migration outflows has risen steadily with labor demand in these destinations over the last two decades.

Migration from Bangladesh is largely temporary, which is the case in many migration corridors (Dustmann and G ̈orlach 2016). The temporary nature of migration is imposed by the laws in the destination countries in the Persian Gulf and East Asia where acquisition of citizenship or permanent residency is effectively impossible, irrespective of migrants’ occupation, education, nationality, or duration of stay (Wahba 2015; Fargues 2011; Fargues and De Bel-Air 2015). Valid employment contracts are typically for a fixed duration of time and tied to a specific employer who can extend the contract (Das et al. 2019). Yet, because stay inside the country is conditional on holding an employment contract, migrants cannot retire in the destination country, even if they have stayed for decades. Furthermore, low-skilled

> 4Emigration from Bangladesh is largely male-dominated. According from administrative data from the Bangladesh, Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), women represent only 4 percent of temporary migrants from Bangladesh. Data from the World Bank Return Migrant Survey (BRMS) for Bangladesh show similar patterns. The prevalence of male labor migration is driven by the low labor-force participation of women in Bangladesh (Rahman and R. Islam 2013), combined with concentration of foreign labor demand in brawn-based occupations. In addition, there is social pressure on women to stay behind as they bear household responsibilities, and low-skilled temporary migrants are not allowed to take their families with them (Ahmed and Bossavie 2021).

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