Positive Effect Of Remittances Research Articles

International remittances and labor supply in Nigeria: Do educational attainment and household income matter?

AbstractThe effect of remittances on the labor supply decisions of recipients remains a subject of contention. To contribute to the debate, we investigate how the educational attainment and household income of remittance recipients shape their decisions to work. Using data from the 2018–2019 living standard measurement survey for over 61,000 Nigerians and applying the instrumental variable probit and Tobit techniques, we find that remittances are associated with an occupational switch from agriculture to nonagricultural (paid jobs and nonfarm enterprises) works. Specifically, the results show that remittance recipients are more likely to exit or reduce the hours worked on the farm, regardless of educational attainment and household income status. On the other hand, remittances promote labor supply to paid jobs and nonfarm enterprises, especially among the less educated in Northern Nigeria. In terms of household income, the positive effect of remittances on nonfarm jobs only holds for individuals in the top income quartile, regardless of their region of residence. Our findings are robust to alternative estimation techniques and hold important cues for policymakers.

Effects of remittances on food security in sub‐Saharan Africa

AbstractThe objective of this research was to analyze the effects of remittances on food security in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA), while assessing the role of governance. The analyses covered a panel of 26 SSA countries over the period from 2002 to 2017. Based on the double least squares method, two main results were obtained. On the one hand, remittances have a positive effect on overall food security and on each of its dimensions in SSA. On the other hand, this positive effect of remittances on food security and its dimensions is increasingly important when the quality of governance improves.

The impact of pandemic COVID-19 on remittances and macroeconomy fundamental in ASEAN 6

Globalization and liberalization increasingly provide opportunities for each country to increase regional and global cooperation. Socio-economic integration is also increasing, along with community cooperation in the regional and global scope. This study aims to determine the effect of remittances and other macroeconomic variables such as FDI, inflation, and export-import on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6 countries. The panel data analysis method used is regression using panel data sourced from the World Bank and ASEAN datasets in the form of annual data. The estimation results from FEM found that exports and remittances showed a significant positive effect on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6. In addition, imports showed a significant negative effect on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6. Meanwhile, several macroeconomic variables that were not significant were FDI, which showed a significant negative effect. Positive but not significant, inflation has a negative but not significant effect on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6. The emphasis on the positive effect of remittances on GDP per capita proves that the flow of remittances into developing countries will help increase income per capita. Vice versa, a crisis that hinders the increase in the enthusiasm of emigrants. The COVID-19 pandemic delays the emigrant's production activities and increases that will hinder the flow of remittances into the country of origin, such as in ASEAN 6 countries.

The effect of remittances on the current account in developing and emerging economies

AbstractThis paper presents an analysis of the effect of remittances on the current account in developing and emerging economies, incorporating an assessment of the extent to which exchange rate regimes impact the relationship. The main findings suggest that there is a positive effect of remittances on the current account contemporaneously, but that the lagged effect is negative, which could be indicative of the existence of some underlying mechanisms characteristic of the Dutch disease phenomenon. In addition, the results show that a more flexible exchange regime dampens the contemporaneous positive effect that remittances have on the current account. The paper, therefore, asserts that policymakers face trade‐offs pertaining to the use of exchange rate policy in managing the effects of remittances on the current account, which should be given due consideration when such policy choices are made.

Patterned remittances enhance women's health-related autonomy.

The consequences for women “left behind” by virtue of temporary male migration are mixed. On the one hand, concomitant changes in fertility, participation in the labor force, and social norms are often associated with increased independence for women. On the other hand, women left behind can be vulnerable to increased dependency on members of their husbands' family or face limited access to social institutions. These shifts in women's capacity for decision making can have important implications for their health and well-being. Focusing on the state of Kerala in southern India, we examine the conditions under which the remittances that migrants send home have an impact on the health of women left behind. Specifically, we assess the extent to which the timing of remittance sending can support women's autonomy and improve their ability to make autonomous healthcare decisions. We use evidence from migrant households in Kerala, a region deeply engrained in the world labor migration system for more than five decades. Analysis is conducted with data from the 2016 wave of the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS), a representative household survey, and paired with in-depth qualitative interviews with women in Kerala whose husbands and other family members have migrated to the Gulf. We show that the positive effect of remittances on women's autonomy manifests primarily through the timing of remittance receipt, not the amount of money remitted. Regular remittances are associated with higher levels of autonomy than remittances received at irregular intervals, net of amount remitted. This finding challenges the usual emphasis on remittance volume as the driving factor of social and behavioral change in sending communities. Analytical efforts should be refocused on the social-interactional component of remittance sending and how these interactions can impact women's health and autonomy.

Development Impacts of International Migration on “Sending” Communities: The Case of Rural Kyrgyzstan

This paper analyzes the impacts of international migration and remittances on different sources of income in rural Kyrgyzstan. Based on a household dataset from the Life in Kyrgyzstan panel survey of 1012 rural households, we estimate equations for crop income, livestock income, and nonagricultural income jointly in a system using the seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) and general method of moments (GMM) three-stage least-squares (3SLS) estimators. Our results show that international migration had diverse effects on different sources of rural income in Kyrgyzstan. The effect of international migration in total was negative on crop income, but positive on livestock income and mixed for nonagricultural income. The positive effect of remittances on nonagricultural income implies that migration can promote diversification of rural households’ income sources. This in turn is associated with less income uncertainty and risk in the future and can provide a positive contribution to the economic development of a migrant-sending community.

Do remittances support consumption during crisis? Evidence from Kosovo

This paper focuses on the effect of remittances on per capita consumption over time in a context of conflict, war-to-peace transition and crisis. We use two household surveys from Kosovo with unique timing, one collected immediately after the civil war in 2000 and the other during the economic crisis in 2010. This territory, in which the tension among ethnic groups is the focus of international concern, is one of the top remittance-receiving countries in the world. We examine the effect of remittances not only at the average level of consumption, but also at various parts of the distribution of consumption using quantile regressions. We find that remittances alleviate poverty by enhancing the consumption level of the most vulnerable households, and the positive effect of remittances on consumption has remained constant between 2000 and 2010. This result may be connected with the resilience of remittances.

The Role of International Remittances in Health Outcomes in Ecuador: Prevention and Response to Shocks

This article evaluates the impact of remittances on health outcomes in Ecuador using an instrumental-variables approach. Although we do not find significant impacts on long-term child health variables, we find that remittances do have an impact on health expenditures, and on some preventive issues such as de-worming and vaccination. In addition, we find significant effects of remittances on medicine expenditures when illness occurs. In this regard, remittances are used for both preventive and emergency situations. Interestingly, we also find a significant and positive effect of remittances on health knowledge.