Foreign remittances and income inequality in Pakistan: A Pooled Regression Analysis

Abstract

The people from developing countries like Pakistan move to developed countries to earn their bread and butter. Consequently, such migrants remit a handsome part of their earnings to their dependents living in homeland. Foreign remittances have multidimensional impact on the economy of a developing country. The study evaluates the impact of foreign remittances on income inequality in Pakistan by estimating the set of fixed effect and random effect models using the pooled data from eight household income and expenditure surveys between 1998/99 and 2015/16. Gini coefficient as well as generalized entropy measure is used to estimate income inequality, but the results remain intact. It is observed that foreign remittances have statistically significant favorable impacts on income inequality in Pakistan. Further, the results are robust and insensitive to control variables (e.g. income and poverty measures, headcount ratio, poverty gap and squared poverty gap). The policy measure is that Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE) should be empowered to explore the job opportunities in developed countries. The government should assist the migrants through subsidizing the visa and migration processes to capitalize the foreign remittances.