Compare methods

	New Economics of Labor Migration Test	Migrant Network Analysis
Field	Migration Studies	Migration Studies
Family	Regression model	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1985	1990
Originator	Oded Stark & David E. Bloom; Oded Stark & J. Edward Taylor	Douglas S. Massey
Type	Household-level econometric test of migration as risk and relative-deprivation strategy	Network and feedback pipeline for migration self-perpetuation
Seminal source	Stark, O., & Bloom, D. E. (1985). The New Economics of Labor Migration. American Economic Review, 75(2), 173-178.	Massey, D. S. (1990). Social Structure, Household Strategies, and the Cumulative Causation of Migration. Population Index, 56(1), 3-26.
Aliases	NELM Test, Relative Deprivation Migration Model, Household Risk-Diversification Migration Test, Stark-Bloom Migration Model	Migration Network Analysis, Social Capital Migration Analysis, Cumulative Causation Analysis, Network Prevalence Migration Model
Related	3	3
Summary	The new economics of labor migration (NELM), launched by Oded Stark and David Bloom in 1985, recasts migration as a decision made by households rather than isolated individuals and as a strategy aimed at managing risk and relative standing rather than simply maximizing one earner's wage. In the neoclassical view a worker migrates because expected earnings abroad exceed earnings at home; NELM argues instead that families in economies with missing or imperfect insurance and credit markets send a member away to diversify income sources and to relax the constraints those market failures impose. Stark and Taylor's 1991 paper added a second, distinctive motive: households migrate to reduce their relative deprivation — their position in the local income distribution — so that a family can be absolutely well-off yet still send a migrant because it feels poor relative to neighbors. Testing NELM therefore means estimating migration and remittance behavior as functions of household risk exposure and relative deprivation, not just the wage gap. Massey and colleagues' 1993 review positioned NELM as the principal theoretical rival to neoclassical migration economics. The test is fundamentally a household-level econometric exercise that pits these motives against the simple expected-income account.	Migrant network analysis studies the interpersonal ties — of kinship, friendship, and shared origin — that link prospective migrants to people who have already migrated, and treats these ties as a form of social capital that lowers the costs and risks of moving. Douglas Massey's 1990 article argued that once a few pioneers establish themselves at a destination, they reduce the difficulty of migration for everyone connected to them: relatives and friends can draw on their information, housing, job leads, and support, so each successful move makes the next one easier and more likely. This dynamic produces cumulative causation, a self-feeding process in which migration alters the social and economic context of the origin community in ways that promote still more migration, until flows acquire a momentum largely independent of the conditions that first set them off. Massey and colleagues' 1993 review codified network theory as one of the perpetuating mechanisms of international migration, distinct from the factors that initiate it. The analysis maps the network of ties, measures the prevalence of migration experience in a community, and models how that prevalence raises individual migration probabilities. It explains why migration streams, once begun, are so difficult to stop.