Seasonal Unemployment and Voluntary Out-Migration from Northern Bangladesh (Report‪)‬

1. Introduction The northern region of Bangladesh is a rather backward part of the country owing to, inter alia, its near absolute dependency on agriculture and almost non-existence of other significant sources of employment. Accordingly, rural-urban migration on temporary and voluntary basis frequently occurs in quest of employment due to seasonal unemployment during the lean period from mid- September to mid-November [1]. Furthermore, the region is also vulnerable to a wide variety of climaterelated shocks, e.g. frequent flood and resultant crop damage, river bank erosion, drought, etc. To reduce the risk emanated from income fluctuations mainly caused by seasonal unemployment, primary income-earners of many households temporarily migrate to outside of their usual working areas to diversified labor-intensive sectors of urban areas to smooth out income flow [2-4].