Publication: Surveying Migrant Households: A Comparison of Census-Based, Snowball and Intercept Point Surveys
No Thumbnail Available
Published
2009
ISSN
09641998
Date
2012-03-30
Author(s)
Mistiaen, Johan
Editor(s)
Abstract
New representative surveys of households of migrants exist, limiting our ability to study the effects of international migration on sending families. We report the results of an experiment that was designed to compare the performance of three alternative survey methods in collecting data from Japanese-Brazilian families, many of whom send migrants to Japan. The three surveys that were conducted were households selected randomly from a door-to-door listing using the Brazilian census to select census blocks, a snowball survey using Nikkei community groups to select the seeds and an intercept point survey that was collected at Nikkei community gatherings, ethnic grocery stores, sports clubs, and other locations where family members of migrants are likely to congregate. We analyse how closely well-designed snowball and intercept point surveys can approach the much more expensive census-based method in terms of giving information on the characteristics of migrants, the level of remittances received and the incidence and determinants of return migration.
Link to Data Set
Digital Object Identifier
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Surveying Migrant Households : A Comparison of Census-Based, Snowball, and Intercept Point Surveys(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12)Few representative surveys of households of migrants exist, limiting the analysis of the effects of international migration on sending families. This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to compare the performance of three alternative survey methods in collecting data from Japanese-Brazilian families, many of whom send migrants to Japan. The three surveys conducted were 1) Households selected randomly from a door-to-door listing using the Brazilian Census to select census blocks; 2) A snowball survey using Nikkei community groups to select the seeds; and 3) An intercept point survey collected at Nikkei community gatherings, ethnic grocery stores, sports clubs, and other locations where family members of migrants are likely to congregate. The authors analyze how closely well-designed snowball and intercept point surveys can approach the much more expensive census-based method in terms of giving information on the characteristics of migrants, the level of remittances received, and the incidence and determinants of return migration.Publication Eliciting Probabilistic Expectations with Visual Aids in Developing Countries: How Sensitive Are Answers to Variations in Elicitation Design?(2011)Eliciting subjective probability distributions in developing countries is often based on visual aids such as beans to represent probabilities and intervals on a sheet of paper to represent the support. We conduct an experiment in India which tests the sensitivity of elicited expectations to variations in three facets of the elicitation methodology: the number of beans, the design of the support (predetermined or self-anchored), and the ordering of questions. Our results show remarkable robustness to variations in elicitation design. Nevertheless, the added precision offered by using more beans and a larger number of intervals with a predetermined support improves accuracy.Publication In Pursuit of Balance : Randomization in Practice in Development Field Experiments(2009)We present new evidence on the randomization methods used in existing experiments, and new simulations comparing these methods. We find that many papers do not describe the randomization in detail, implying that better reporting is needed. Our simulations suggest that in samples of 300 or more, the different methods perform similarly. However, for very persistent outcome variables, and in smaller samples, pair-wise matching and stratification perform best and appear to dominate the rerandomization methods commonly used in practice. The simulations also point to specific recommendations for which variables to balance on, and for which controls to include in the ex post analysis.Publication What Happens to Diet and Child Health When Migration Splits Households? Evidence from a Migration Lottery Program(2011)The impact of migration on food security and child health is likely to differ depending on whether children themselves migrate or whether they remain behind while other household members migrate. However, existing studies have not been able to examine how impacts differ in these two scenarios because parallel data are required for both the sending and receiving country. Moreover, self-selection into migration makes unbiased estimation of either impact difficult. We overcome these problems by using a unique survey of Tongan households that applied to migrate to New Zealand through a migrant quota which selects households through a random ballot. This survey covers both migrant children in New Zealand and non-migrant children in Tonga, with the migration policy rules providing a source of exogenous variation for identifying impacts. Our estimates of short-run impacts show that diets diverge upon migration: children who migrate experience improvements, while diets worsen for children who remain. There is also suggestive evidence of a divergence in health outcomes, with increases in weight-for-age and height-for-age found for migrant children, and decreases found for children who remain behind while other household members migrate.Publication The Remitting Patterns of African Migrants in the OECD(2010-04-01)Recorded remittances to Africa have grown dramatically over the past decade. Yet data limitations still mean relatively little is known about which migrants remit, how much they remit, and how their remitting behavior varies with gender, education, income levels, and duration abroad. This paper constructs the most comprehensive remittance database on immigrants in the OECD currently available, containing microdata on more than 12,000 African immigrants. Using this microdata the authors establish several basic facts about the remitting patterns of Africans, and then explore how key characteristics of policy interest relate to remittance behavior. Africans are found to remit twice as much on average as migrants from other developing countries, and those from poorer African countries are more likely to remit than those from richer African countries. Male migrants remit more than female migrants, particularly among those with a spouse remaining in the home country; more-educated migrants remit more than less educated migrants; and although the amount remitted increases with income earned, the gradient is quite flat over a large range of income. Finally, there is little evidence that the amount remitted decays with time spent abroad, with reductions in the likelihood of remitting offset by increases in the amount remitted conditional on remitting.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.