Conference Paper

What Makes Women Want to Leave? Survey Results from Lebanon

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No.

ERF30_35

Publisher

ERF

Date

March, 2024

Abstract
Author(s)

Migration aspirations, the hope and ambition to leave the origin country, lie at the heart of self-selection into migration. This project investigates what shapes young women’s aspirations to migrate. Based on a stylized model that integrates aspirations into a standard utility maximization problem, we postulate that individuals develop a desire to migrate if their aspirations cannot be locally fulfilled due to bad prospects and restrictive social environments. Furthermore, we investigate the role of women’s networks. We conducted a nationally representative survey in August 2022 with 1500 women aged between 18 and 35, in Lebanon, a major country of emigration. We study the effects of aspirations in different dimensions, namely education, career, marriage and fertility. First, we find that the likelihood of aspiring migration increases with the share of the network planning to migrate. Furthermore, we find that having unlikely career or education aspirations is associated with a higher will to leave the country, while family aspirations do not affect the migration aspirations of young women. These elements support the findings of the theoretical model predicting that individuals with unlikely aspirations would be more likely to want to migrate.