Why urban migrants understate how much they earn

SOME COUNTRY folk do not understand what life is like in town, says Roda Radido, who lives in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. She is right. Rural Kenyans typically have no idea how much better off they would be if they moved to a city. A survey by Travis Baseler of the University of Rochester found that people in western Kenya guessed that the average worker in Nairobi earns about twice as much as the average worker in Bungoma, a small town near the border with Uganda. In fact, the Nairobian makes four times as much. Urban Kenyan incomes are higher even after accounting for costlier rent and rood, and even when comparing wages in similar jobs.Why do rural folk underestimate the rewards of working in a city? Many respondents had relatives who had worked in Nairobi, who could easily have told them. Yet for some reason they did not. When Mr Baseler surveyed migrants in the capital, nine out of ten said their loved ones back home did not know how much they were earning.