# IV – When Do Migrants Consider Going Abroad for Work?

The average monthly remittance payment recorded in the L2CU study is, alone, more than twice as large as the average salary in Uzbekistan. Surely, a large share of labor migrants travels abroad simply because of the stark differences in wages, and there is little else needed to explain their behavior. However, potentially there are also economic challenges and hardships that increase the need that particular migrants feel to go abroad, and that also increase the salience of the average wage differential. This section aims to quantify the contribution of these factors in the migration decision.

In contrast to the preceding section that focuses largely on the static data from the baseline survey and administrative data collected in the L2CU study, the following two sections take advantage of the panel design of the phone-based survey conducted with a subset of more than 1,500 households that participated in the baseline. This type of information allows additional analyses that account for common confounding factors that complicate the interpretation of simple cross-sectional comparisons. However, again beginning with these simple comparisons helps to establish the overall association between the decision to migrate and the measures of interest. For this reason, table (6) reports descriptive OLS regressions like those reported in section (3). The difference between the estimates reported in table (4) and table (6) comes from the difference in data sources and the definitions of the variables. Table (6) focuses on responses for households that either consider sending a migrant during the period in question, or when a migrant departs (while table (3) focused instead on migrants that were already abroad at the time of the baseline survey).

The descriptive statistics are grouped into three broad categories: (i) shocks, (ii) labor market issues, and (iii) personal views. For ease of exposition the results are presented in separate tables (6-8), though the distinction between these in some cases is arbitrary. As was the case with the results reported in tables (4) and (5), it is important to note that simple cross-sectional regressions of this type do not distinguish between factors that directly affect migration decisions, and those that are merely associated with such decisions.

Table (6) suggests that the local labor market is associated with migration decisions, and that labor outcomes are better (lower unemployment for those households that have already sent migrants abroad). To show this, table (6) reports estimates for two dependent variables: i) at least one household member considering (columns 1-5) or ii) the household has at least one current labor migrant abroad (columns 6-9). Each column presents the association between the dependent variable and a covariate of interest while controlling for calendar month and while clustering standard errors at the household level. Column (1) indicates that households with members who are considering migrating have significantly lower share of employed adult members than otherwise similar households. Column (3) shows that this remains true when including those household members who may already be abroad working in the calculation of the share of adults employed. Column (3) suggests that such households have a larger number of members who are currently looking for a job. Column (4) suggests that households with a person considering migration have a significant (but small) lower average household income than other households. Column (5) suggests that respondents from households “considering migration” on average are significantly more likely to think that their local labor market in very bad (the worst option available).

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