households that stayed behind in the same region of origin. To account for selection bias, we exploit the well-documented evidence that migrants tend to settle where other migrants from the same village (or town) of origin reside. We make use of historical migration networks at destination as an exclusion restriction: we use district-level information from the 1984 Census to construct our measure of network, captured by the historical internal immigration rate at destination up to 16 years before the migration episode occurred.

Our estimates indicate that migration has a positive impact on consumption levels. On average, migrant households have a consumption level 77 percent higher than non-migrant households, and the effect is driven by households originally from Inland Ghana. In other words, there is a big gain in moving out of the Northern regions of the country. The impact is larger among male-headed households and households headed by higher educated individuals. We also find that migration substantially reduces distance from the poverty line.

We show robust evidence that such impact is attributable to a physical mobility effect that goes beyond the effect associated with moving out of agriculture or moving out of a rural area. Most of the migrants, in fact, do not move to an urban area from a rural location, and the large majority does not change sector of employment at destination. Internal migration in Ghana is beneficial to household welfare, remarkably when migration occurs from Inland Ghana to other regions. Policies aimed at limiting internal migratory flows are not recommended, as migration can bring positive effects and the policies would represent a limitation to individuals’ freedom.

At the same time, however, internal migration comes with important social costs that need to be factored in. First, as described in previous sections, those migrating are generally younger, more educated and more entrepreneurial than those deciding to stay. It follows that areas that are already poor see an outflow of important resources that could have contributed to the local development (Awumbila, 2007). True is that via remittances poor areas might eventually get some compensation for this brain drain but the effects can manifest with a certain lag and sometimes the benefits do not offset the loss.

Second, and linked to the previous aspect, is that those who stay might become even poorer after the migration of the youngest and fittest. Awumbila and Ardayfio-Schandorf, (2008) argue that, poverty may also be as a result of migration. In families and communities where husbands and the active productive youth populations have migrated, poverty among children, wives, elderly people and other dependents may be worsened. This line of argument clearly interrogates the poverty migration nexus.

Third, there is increasing evidence that those migrating are not only adults with potentially better economic opportunities, but also kids who might end up being street children. Kwankye et al. (2009), find that migration of children from Northern to Southern Ghana has become a very common phenomenon as, in their survey, almost every household is reported to have a child migrant in Southern Ghana. While not all child migrants become street children, estimates are not encouraging. Using a nationwide survey of 2,314 street children, Kwankye et al. (2009) calculate that over a third of the street children were from the Northern region (38.1 percent) followed by the Upper East (12.1 percent).

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