Get Rich or Die Tryin' : Perceived Earnings, Perceived Mortality Rate and the Value of a Statistical Life of Potential Work-Migrants from Nepal

Shrestha, Maheshwor

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: migration;    expectations;    life value;    wages;    mortality;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7945
RP-ID  :  WPS7945

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Do potential migrants have accurateinformation about the risks and returns of migrating abroad?And, given the information they have, what is their revealedwillingness to trade risks for higher earnings? To answerthese questions, this paper sets up and analyzes arandomized field experiment among 3,319 potential workmigrants from Nepal to Malaysia and the Persian Gulfcountries. The experiment provides them with information onwages and mortality incidences in their choice destination,and tracks their migration decision three months later. Thefindings show that potential migrants severely overestimatetheir mortality rate abroad, and that information onmortality incidences lowers this expectation. Potentialmigrants without prior foreign migration experience alsooverestimate their earnings potential abroad, andinformation on earnings lowers this expectation. Usingexogenous variation in expectations for the inexperiencedpotential migrants generated by the experiment, the studyestimates migration elasticities of 0.7 in expected earningsand 0.5 in expected mortality. The experiment allows thecalculation of the trade-off the inexperienced potentialmigrants make between earnings and mortality risk, and hencetheir value of a statistical life. The estimates range fromUS$0.28 million to US$0.54 million, which is a reasonablerange for a poor population.