Eligibility for the BRMS was restricted to migrants who had returned from employment overseas to Bangladesh since 2010. This restriction was put in place to reduce possible issues that might arise regarding the accuracy of migrants’ recollection of past migration experiences, and, at the same time, to allow for some variability in the timing of return of the migrants. The sampling frame used for the survey was the Bangladesh Census of Population and Housing for 2011. The survey used a two-stage, stratified-cluster sample design: In the first sampling stage, a total of 250 unions throughout Bangladesh were randomly selected from the rural and semi-urban unions of the census. In the second sampling stage, households with returned migrants were randomly selected from a listing carried out in each selected union to identify households with return migrants.

The dataset has several features that enable us to fill important data gaps identified in prior work. First, the survey was designed with the understanding that temporary migration decisions are part of a life-cycle-optimization process by the workers. As a result, the survey includes detailed retrospective questions on the entire employment histories of migrants both in Bangladesh (before and after the migration) and while they were abroad. The data allow us to construct the full employment trajectories of the workers in the sample with detailed information on each migration episode, including destination country, dates and duration of stay, labor market outcomes (such as wages and occupation), and the reasons for returning.

The survey records the costs of each migration episode, finely disaggregated by cost categories and the source of financing. Such detailed data are rarely collected in household surveys that include migration modules.<sup>12</sup> Those expenses play a critical role in migration decisions in the case of Bangladesh and other South Asian countries, where these costs are known to be very high relative to workers’ earnings (International Labour Organization 2015; Farole, Cho, Bossavie, and Aterido 2017).<sup>13</sup> The survey asks workers about the expectations that they held prior to their migration experience regarding labor market outcomes in the destination countries, such as wages and savings. As a result, we can compare their expectations with actual outcomes. Borjas and Bratsberg (1996) postulate that lower-than-expected earnings may be an important reason for return migration from the United States, and McKenzie, Gibson, and Stillman (2013) provide empirical evidence on over-optimistic expectations for migrants from Tonga. Even

> 12One exception is the Labor Market Panel Survey for Egypt, one of the few labor market surveys in sending countries that include a detailed module on past migration, and collects information on intermediary fees paid by migrants. Migration from Egypt, however, is distinct from the migration from Bangladesh in that the former includes a larger share of undocumented migrants, many of them headed to European countries.

> 13In a recent study, Mobarak, Sharif, and Shrestha (2020) examine a government-mediated program between Bangladesh and Malaysia where the migration costs are significantly lower. The migrants are chosen via lottery which allows the authors to address the selection problems directly and show how migration improves the welfare of the families. The authors attribute the gains, at least in part, to the low fees.

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