Household Assets and Internal Mobility in Laos: Agricultural Land, Home Ownership, and Multi-Stream Population Redistribution

초록

Internal migration in agrarian economies is usually framed as a rural-to-urban transition, but population redistribution follows multiple pathways. Household assets such as land and housing shape these moves, and how they do so is contested: some research finds that assets anchor households in place, while other work finds that they enable movement. This debate has centred on rural-to-urban flows in settings of uneven ownership, leaving open how assets relate to the full range of mobility, including non-migration and rural-bound moves, where ownership is near-universal. This study examines that question in Lao PDR, a setting of gradual urbanisation and continued rural dominance. Drawing on the nationally representative Lao Social Indicator Survey, it models three outcomes: migration versus non-migration, rural versus urban residence among non-migrants, and the direction of movement among migrants. Two findings emerge. First, mobility in Laos is multidirectional rather than a single rural-to-urban flow: measured against rural–urban migration, rural–rural movement is about three times as common, and urban–urban and urban–rural flows each about twice as common. Second, ownership and renting point in opposite directions: agricultural land and home ownership accompany staying and rural-bound movement, while renting and internet access accompany urban-oriented mobility. Notably, urban residence does not preclude landholding: most urban residents still own farmland. These findings extend the population geography of assets and mobility beyond the rural-to-urban paradigm, revealing a household-level dual attachment in which the same assets anchor and enable mobility at once.

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