Consequences of Out-Migration for Land Use in Rural Ecuador

Richard Bilsborrow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In many rural areas of the developing world, migrants are leaving, reducing labor availability to the rural household but also often leading to substantial remittances subsequently. There have been many studies of the impacts on household labor, consumption and poverty, but little on the implications for the environment. In particular, an ongoing debate has been whether the out-migration and remittance flows transform rural land use and contribute to biodiversity restoration via less intense land use or even abandonment. To address this, we use data from a 2008 household survey and satellite imagery on three diverse rural regions of Ecuador to evaluate the effects of migration and remittances on land use. Our statistical approach explores potential endogeneity of migration and remittances, and examines individual, household and community explanatory variables. Preliminary results suggest that migration contributes to the expansion of agriculture, contrary to common assumptions, but that remittances have a countervailing effect.