urban residency since childhood and independently of the year of migration. Further, there is also urban-to-urban migration that accounts for another 18% of the current urban residents, which implies that nonmigrants represent only 22% of the current urban population. In contrast, the nonmigrants account for the largest share of the current rural population, 65% (see panel A1 in Table 11). Finally, rural-to-rural migration represents 31% of households and urban-torural migration is minor and represents merely 4%. This implies that the absolute rural-to-urban migration flow is <u>60%4%</u> _××_ 8118 _.._ 7%3%<sup>=3.36timeslargerthantheoppositeurban-to-ruralflow,which</sup> generates a structural shift that decreases rural population from a counterfactual of 89.4% (i.e., a scenario under which all migrants in the data return to their original residency) to the current 81.7% in 2010/11.<sup>55</sup> Interestingly, our migration patterns differ substantially from the averages recently documented in Young (2013) for 39 countries for which the rural-to-urban migration flows are much more similar to their urban-to-rural counterpart, precisely, by a factor of<sup><u>23</u></sup> 13<sup>_<u>.</u>_</sup> _._<sup><u>9%</u></sup> 2%<sup>_<u>×</u>_</sup> _×_<sup><u>41</u></sup> 58<sup>_<u>.</u>_</sup> _._<sup><u>5%</u></sup> 5%<sup>=</sup> 1.28.<sup>56</sup> To explore migration as a potential source of inequality, we study whether migrants fare better in terms of average CIW than nonmigrants. First, note that urban residency is associated with better CIW than rural residency even within the nonmigrant population (see the first columns of panel A2 and B2 in Table 11). Urban nonmigrants enjoy consumption that is higher than the consumption of their rural nonmigrant counterparts by a factor of 1.70, higher income by a factor of 1.59, and higher wealth by a factor of 2.09. Second, exploring the incentives of rural-to-urban migration — that is, comparing the rural-to-urban migrants with the nonmigrants in rural areas — we find that this type of migration boosts consumption by a factor of 2.17, income by a factor of 2.10, and wealth by a factor of 1.89. Further, we find that the rural-to-urban migrants tend to do slightly better than the urban-born who do not migrate but worse than urban-born that migrate within urban areas. Indeed, the urban-to-urban migrants are the group that does

> 55Indeed, using IHS2 data for Malawi we find that in 2004-05 the rural population accounted for 86.8% of the total population, suggesting that a proportion of our migration patterns occurred in a period that spans more than 5 years. Indeed, we find that 50.70% of households have migrated in the past 10 years, 32.1% in the past 5 years, 15.5% in the past 2 years, and 8.86% within the past year. If we focus on the urban residents and define as migrants as only those who migrate in the past five years, rural-to-urban migrants account for 18% of total current urban residents, 8% are urban-to-urban migrants, and 74% are nonmigrants. If we focus on the rural residents and define as migrants as only those who migrate in the past five years, rural-to-rural migrants account for 8% of total current rural residents, 1% are urban-to-rural migrants, and 91% are nonmigrants. Last, migration is a phenomenon of the young, with a median age at migration of 25, and more educated, with 1.54 years of schooling more than the nonmigrants of their cohort; see also De Magalh ̃aes et al. (2015).

> 56This last ratio for Young (2013) is computed using statistics reported in his Table II. We find reasonable larger rural-to-urban migration flows for the economies that we study, which are currently in the earliest stages of economic development and still hold a large fraction of their populations in rural areas, roughly 80%. Instead, the average figures in Young (2013) incorporate middle-income countries with substantial completion of the rural-tourban transition. In those middle income countries the self-selection mechanisms studied in Lagakos and Waugh (2013) are likely to be operative with less frictions and costs to migration than those potentially present in the economies that we investigate, a feature that we acknowledge deserves further exploration.

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