Hunger during pre-harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We randomly assign an $8.50 incentive to households in rural Bangladesh to out-migrate during the lean season. The incentive induces 22 % of households to send a seasonal migrant, their consumption at the origin increases significantly, and treated households are 8-10 percentage points more likely to re-migrate 1 and 3 years after the incentive is removed. These facts can be explained qualitatively by a model in which migration is risky, mitigating risk requires individual-specific learning, and some migrants are sufficiently close to subsistence such that failed migration is very costly. We document evidence consistent with this model using heterogeneity analysis and additional experimental variation, but calibrations with forward-looking households that can save up to migrate suggest that it is difficult for the model to quantitatively match the data. We conclude with extensions to the model that

Our large-scale experiment with 542 families from rural Bangladesh finds substantial intergenerational persistence of economic preferences. Both mothers' and fathers' risk, time, and social preferences are significantly (and largely to the same degree) positively correlated with their children's economic preferences, even when controlling for personality traits and socioeconomic background. We discuss possible transmission channels and are the first to classify all families into one of two clusters, with either relatively patient, risk-tolerant, and prosocial members or relatively impatient, risk averse, and spiteful members. Classifications correlate with socioeconomic background variables. We find that our results differ from evidence for rich countries.