Nobles Jenna, McKelvey Christopher
Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 4456 Sewell Social Sciences, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Demography. 2015 Oct;52(5):1573-600. doi: 10.1007/s13524-015-0401-6.
The prevailing model of migration in developing countries conceives of a risk-diversifying household in which members act as a single entity when making migration decisions. Ethnographic studies challenge this model by documenting gender hierarchy in family decisions and arguing that, in many contexts, men and women have differing views on the value of migration. We assess these perspectives using longitudinal survey data from Mexico. We show that Mexican households are heterogeneous in terms of women's decision-making authority and control over resources, and this variation predicts the subsequent emigration of their male partners to the United States. We then use data from a policy experiment to demonstrate that an exogenous increase in a woman's control over household resources decreases the probability that her spouse migrates. Our findings support the presence of important gender differences in how migration is valued. They also suggest that women's role in these decisions is inadvertently underrepresented in studies of migrant families. Staying is also a migration decision, and it is more likely in homes in which women have greater authority. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that Mexican migration is influenced not only by increases in household resources but also by which members of the household control them.
发展中国家普遍的移民模式认为，家庭是一个风险分散的整体，家庭成员在做出移民决策时作为一个单一实体行事。人种志研究对这一模式提出了挑战，它们记录了家庭决策中的性别等级制度，并指出，在许多情况下，男性和女性对移民价值的看法存在差异。我们使用来自墨西哥的纵向调查数据来评估这些观点。我们发现，墨西哥家庭在女性的决策权力和对资源的控制方面存在异质性，这种差异预示着其男性伴侣随后向美国移民的情况。然后，我们利用一项政策实验的数据表明，女性对家庭资源控制的外生增加会降低其配偶移民的可能性。我们的研究结果支持了在如何看待移民问题上存在重要性别差异这一观点。它们还表明，在移民家庭研究中，女性在这些决策中的作用被无意地低估了。留下来也是一种移民决策，在女性拥有更大权力的家庭中更有可能出现这种情况。从政策角度来看，结果表明，墨西哥的移民不仅受到家庭资源增加的影响，还受到家庭中哪些成员控制这些资源的影响。
