Moving Forward, Looking Back: The Impact of Migrants' Remittances on Assets, Consumption, and Credit Constraints in Sending Communities in the Rural Philippines

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of remittances on the asset positions consumption expenditures and credit constraint status of households in origin communities using a unique longitudinal data set from the Philippines. The Bukidnon Panel Study follows up 448 families in rural Mindanao who were first interviewed in 1984/85 by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Research Institute for Mindanao Culture Xavier University. The study interviewed the original respondents and a sample of their offspring both those who have remained in the same area and those who have moved to a different location. Parents (original respondents) and children who formed separate households in the same locality were interviewed in 2003; offspring that migrated to other rural and urban areas were interviewed in 2004. This paper concentrates on the impact of remittances from outside the original survey villages on parent households as well as households of children in the same locality taking into account the endogeneity of remittances to characteristics of the origin households characteristics of the migrant network and shocks to both the origin households and migrants. (authors)