Rural-Urban Migration and Substance use

Rural-Urban Migration and Substance use: A temporal causal analysis using staggered difference-in-difference regression

Adeola Oyenubi and Umakrishnan Kollamparambil

 Abstract

We explore the causal effect of rural-urban migration on substance use in a developing country context. We also examine the effect of rural-urban migration on initiation of substance use and present post-migration temporal dynamics of the level of substance use using the heterogeneous robust difference-in-difference estimator. Analysis is based on a nationally representative longitudinal data collected over a decade in South Africa.

Result show that migration increases substance use among men, but not among women. The rise in substance use among men is not limited to the immediate post-migration period but persists in subsequent years. The effect is stronger for individuals who were below 35 years of age at the time of migration. Restricting the analysis to those who are uninitiated before migration, the study found that migration increased the likelihood of initiation of substance use for men, women and younger migrants. The findings remained consistent across various robustness checks.

Keywords: substance use; risky health behaviors; geographic variation; migration

JEL Codes: I12; L66; D12; I18

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