Deciphering the relationship between internal migration and regional disparities in Tunisia

Abstract EN

This paper analysis the key factors that shape inter-governorates migration in Tunisia, focusing mainly on the role of distance, labor market characteristics, human capital and per capita expenditure in driving migration flows.

It uses basic and extended gravity model as well as the Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood model for modelling migration data extracted from the 2004 census.

The main findings reveal that, as expected, inter-governorate migrations in Tunisia are affected by high population size at the origin and destination, high unemployment rate at the origin, low unemployment rate at the destination.

The paper’s results suggest as well that migrations flows are affected negatively by high job vacancies availability and per capita expenditure at the origin.

However, the contribution of wage and human capital variables in the explanation of migration was not significant.