Agriculture remains as one of the major sources of employment to the rural community in Sri Lanka. However, problems such as inadequate land and capital, low productivity and personal attitudes have pushed the rural agricultural worker to migrate out of the sector. As the decision to migrate is made at the household level, characteristics of the household shape up the decision to migrate and send remittances to the origin communities. Therefore, this study is an attempt to find the determinants of migration and the remittances of the rural sector of Sri Lanka with special emphasis on household level characteristics. In identifying the determinants, the study has estimated several multinomial logit models separately based on the status of migration and receipt of remittances using a nationally representative data set of Household Income and Expenditure Survey (2009/2010). The results reveal that human capital characteristics are not major positive determinants of rural sector migration and receiving remittances implying that households with better education remain in the rural sector. Rural households with more members tend to have more migrants while it is a negative determinant of the receipt of remittances. Results also suggest that rural households receive more remittances from internal migrants when they have school age children. Based on these results, this study concludes that people diversify into different income earning strategies such as migration when they have more household members while education has contributed positively to keep the rural households in the sector. Therefore, the retaining human capital can be used in the rural development process if proper policies are implemented.KeywordsDeterminants, Migration, Remittances, Rural Secto

This study aims to identifying determinants of income diversification at household level in Sri Lankan estate sector. Analysis builds on data of Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2009/2010 conducted by Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka. The data set covered 1736 households in Sri Lankan estate sector. Herfindhal Index was applied to calculate income diversification at household level and Censored Tobit model was used to identify the determinants of income diversification. The econometric analysis shows that gender and age of the household head, household size, ownership of agricultural land, number of workers above 15 years old and availability of migrants in a household have significantly contributed to the performance of income diversification. Further study indicates that migrants of estate household play a critical role in non estate income. All in all, the study clearly depicts that income diversification has become one of the important strategies of income improvement in estate households.

There is a continuing debate over the impacts of migration on the developing nations despite the ever-increasing size of internal and international remittances. Moreover, a little attention has been paid to analyze the impact of these financial transfers on poverty and inequality of those countries. This study, using a nationally representative sample, assessed the impacts of migration and remittances on poverty and inequality of estate sector households of Sri Lanka. A multinomial logit-ordinary least squares two-stage selection control model and a simulation analysis were used to estimate the impact of migration and remittances on poverty and inequality. Results reveal that internal and international remittances reduce poverty incidence by 2.14% and 2.32%, depth of poverty by 1.33% and 0.98%, and severity of poverty by 0.63% and 0.48%, respectively. Results further suggest that income inequality slightly decreased due to internal and international remittances. Moreover, the findings support a growing view in the literature that migration is a livelihood strategy and it helps in alleviating poverty.

Since the 1970s, the Middle East region has dominated the foreign employment market of Sri Lanka. However, Sri Lankan migrants have been paying more attention on moving to South-East Asian and European countries as noted in recent decades. In Sri Lanka, there is a substantial lacuna on the macroeconomic studies related to migration although international migration has a significant impact on economic indicators. As a contribution to reduce this gap, this study examines the macroeconomic determinants of international labor migration from Sri Lanka to South-east Asian and European countries using the gravity model of migration. As, in presence of heteroscedasticity, linear estimators result in inconsistency in estimated coefficients unless we use robust standard errors, Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood estimation technique was used to find the determinants using panel data over the period of 2007 to 2015. Destination-year fixed effects were used to capture unobserved time-variant and time-invariant variables as well as to account for the multilateral resistance. Results reveal that GDP per capita and unemployment rate of Sri Lanka are the push factors which force people to move from Sri Lanka while the destination countries' population and dependency ratio are the pull factors which attract migrants towards the destination. Moreover, the population of Sri Lanka and poverty headcount ratio were also found as significant determinants of international migration.