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

Do potential migrants have accurate information about the risks and returns of migrating abroad? And, given the information they have, what is their revealed willingness to trade risks for higher earnings? To answer these questions, this paper sets up and analyzes a randomized field experiment among...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Shrestha, Maheshwor
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2017
Series:World Bank E-Library Archive
Online Access:
Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 02157nmm a2200229 u 4500
001 EB002104191
003 EBX01000000000000001244281
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 221013 ||| eng
100 1 |a Shrestha, Maheshwor 
245 0 0 |a Get Rich or Die Tryin'  |h Elektronische Ressource  |b Perceived Earnings, Perceived Mortality Rate and the Value of a Statistical Life of Potential Work-Migrants from Nepal  |c Maheshwor Shrestha 
260 |a Washington, D.C  |b The World Bank  |c 2017 
300 |a 41 p 
700 1 |a Shrestha, Maheshwor 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b WOBA  |a World Bank E-Library Archive 
490 0 |a World Bank E-Library Archive 
028 5 0 |a 10.1596/1813-9450-7945 
856 4 0 |u http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/book/10.1596/1813-9450-7945  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 330 
520 |a Do potential migrants have accurate information about the risks and returns of migrating abroad? And, given the information they have, what is their revealed willingness to trade risks for higher earnings? To answer these questions, this paper sets up and analyzes a randomized field experiment among 3,319 potential work migrants from Nepal to Malaysia and the Persian Gulf countries. The experiment provides them with information on wages and mortality incidences in their choice destination, and tracks their migration decision three months later. The findings show that potential migrants severely overestimate their mortality rate abroad, and that information on mortality incidences lowers this expectation. Potential migrants without prior foreign migration experience also overestimate their earnings potential abroad, and information on earnings lowers this expectation. Using exogenous variation in expectations for the inexperienced potential migrants generated by the experiment, the study estimates migration elasticities of 0.7 in expected earnings and 0.5 in expected mortality. The experiment allows the calculation of the trade-off the inexperienced potential migrants make between earnings and mortality risk, and hence their value of a statistical life. The estimates range from US