Abstract:
Internal migration and rural development are the most debated areas of a development process, which have not been adequately addressed for years in many developing countries, particularly in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the relationship between internal migration and rural development. This study used the quantitative approach and secondary data, spanning annually from 1996 to 2019. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to test the hypothesized relationship between the constructs using EViews 11 student version. According to the ARDL results, the study reports a significant positive relationship between internal migration and rural development. Further, it revealed that despite the substantial improvement of rural development that happened over 1996 to 2018, internal migration has also increased by 16 per cent. It is expected that the findings of this study help various level policymakers to address the issues relating to rural development and internal migration from a novel and different perspective. This study also gives insights into problems relating to rural development, internal migration, and urbanization. Future studies may investigate urbanization problems in Sri Lanka which were mainly created by the overflow of internal migration. These problems should be considered by the authorities for the continued sustainable development in Sri Lanka as a whole.
