Impact of Rural Out-Migration on Crop Productivity of Migrant-Sending Rural Households in Oromia Region of Ethiopia

Fassil EshetuSemeneh BessieLamessa T. AbdisaAbdulaziz DawudFekadu Abdissa

DOI 10.7160/aol.2025.170404
No 4/2025, December
pp. 37-56

Eshetu, F., Bessie, S., Abdisa, L. T., Dawud, A. and Abdisa, F. (2025) "Impact of Rural Out-Migration on Crop Productivity of Migrant-Sending Rural Households in Oromia Region of Ethiopia", AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 37-56. ISSN 1804-1930. DOI 10.7160/aol.2025.170404.

Abstract

This study quantified the impact of rural out-migration on crop productivity using the multinomial endogenous switching model as an analytical model in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional data were gathered from a random sample of 384 rural households. The descriptive analysis revealed that the rate of rural-rural migration in Ethiopia decreased from 55.8 to 24.6% while the rate of rural-urban migration increased from 28.7 to 33.8 % between 1984 and 2021. The proportion of migrants in the total urban population increased from 17.2 to 49.2% in the Oromia region between 1999 and 2021. The regression results found that land size, use of irrigation, tropical livestock unit, dependency ratio, and education level of household head decrease the likelihood of participating in migration, whereas family size, number of plots, being female-headed households, and age of household head increase the probability of participating in migration. The participation in rural-urban and international migration increases the productivity of wheat producers by 341.28 and 707.21kilograms, respectively. Similarly, the participation in rural-urban and international migration increases the productivity of teff producers by 502.05 and 257.04 kilograms, respectively. This finding also supports the credit and risk hypotheses of the new economics labour migration theory. Enhancing access to finance or credit markets, agricultural land, and enhanced technology for youth in migrant-sending rural communities can leverage the gains from rural out-migration. Provision of pre-migration training, rural non-farm employment, awareness creation, promotion of safe migration, and better rural public services would capitalize the net benefit from out-migration.

Keywords

Migration, new economics labor migration, productivity, switching model, Oromia.

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