Internal Migration and Youth Entrepreneurship in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

This paper analyzes youth internal migration in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and its impact on entrepreneurship startup in a fresh post‐conflict context. Building on a national representative survey conducted in 2005, a recursive bivariate probit specification is used to jointly estimate the decision models of both migration and entrepreneurship. To evaluate the robustness of results, the propensity score matching method is used to test the concordance of the results after eliminating the redundant impact of unobserved factors. The two main conclusions are that youth migration increases the probability of being an entrepreneur, but in the informal sector. In addition, like secondary and post‐secondary education, the duration of stay after migrating is an important factor to being an entrepreneur in the formal sector. These conclusions are expected to enlighten policy‐makers as to the importance of promoting secondary and post‐secondary education as well as inclusive growth investments that may absorb more youth labor in formal sectors. This is the first exercise in the case of the DRC and since it focuses on youth, the paper makes a unique contribution to the literature related to the link between migration and entrepreneurship in a post‐war context.