Rural-Urban Migration and its Consequence on Urban Living: The Case in Hawassa City Southern Ethiopia
In some developing countries such as Ethiopia the phenomenon of rural-urban migration which is mainly triggered by rural ‘push’ factors and urban ‘pull’ factors is the main cause of unbalanced rate of population growth and distribution between urban and rural areas. This situation in turn affects the healthy development of both urban and rural areas. In spite of this fact, much is not known on many of the aspects of rural-urban migration. As such, this study is mainly concerned with an assessment of the consequence of rural-urban migration on the socio-economic condition of urban living, consequence of rural-urban migration on the environment of urban areas, and consequences of rural-urban migration on the urban labour scenario of the city. In order to find out the problems, household survey was conducted on 197 households sampled through systematic sampling. Primary data had been collected through questionnaire and interview while the secondary one was from different documented sources. Thus, the data obtained from the participants was analyzed through descriptive statistics. Having analyzed the collected data, the researcher had arrived at the conclusion that rural-urban migration has impact on the socio-economic life of the urban dwellers. Rural migrants came to urban areas in search of employment and to utilize urban services and facilities. Since, the continued out flow of rural migrants is in search for the urban basic facilities, migrants have created pressure on the socio-economic and environmental condition of the host area. Now the cities experiences problems such as a shortage of housing, unemployment, increasing cost of living, lack of access to social services, increased crime rate, expansion of urban informal sectors.
