Unpacking the Differential Impact of Development on Internal Migration Across Educational Groups of Population and the Urban Hierarchy

Abstract

This study examines how internal migration responds to development drivers across educational groups in cities of the Global South. While internal migration redistributes human capital, city-level evidence remains limited. To better understand the urban gradients of migration by education over the human development process, we exploit census data that we aggregate to city populations, enabling a sub-national examination of urban out-migration across 13 countries, 313 cities and 29 census years. We apply fixed-effects Poisson regression models to examine how out-migration varies across education levels in response to development in the health, education and wealth domains, and how the relationship varies by city sizes. Results show that out-migration rises with development but is strongly stratified by education. The secondary-educated are the most responsive group, displaying the steepest increases in migration, particularly at mid-levels of development and especially with rising wealth. The least educated group remains constrained by limited resources, while university graduates respond more slowly but in a highly selective manner, especially to local educational expansion. Developmental progress increases out-migration in all city tiers of the urban hierarchy, with secondary cities showing consistently higher out-migration for the highly educated. These findings nuance classic theories by demonstrating that migration transitions are stratified by education and mediated by city size.