Migration decision-making in developing economies is addressed from the perspective of status in the labor force (unemployed or unemployed) and traditional concerns with utility maximization are expanded to include the role of assets and access to capital markets. A dynamic model is formulated and the results reveal that the migration mechanism is efficient when workers have access to borrowing from financial institutions; without this access, migration is shown to be inefficient, a fact exacerbated when consideration is directed to unemployed/poor workers in less prosperous regions.
