Life Earnings and Rural‐Urban Migration

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical study of rural-urban migration—urbani- zation—as it has occurred in many low-income economies in the post- war period. This process is viewed as a transfer of labor from a tra- ditional, land-intensive technology to a human capital-intensive technology with an unending potential for growth. The model em- phasizes the role of cities as places in which new immigrants can accumulate the skills required by modern production technologies.