Consumption and Leisure: The Welfare Impact of Migration on Family Left Behind

Elie Murard

No 10305, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of international migration on the welfare of family members left behind at the origin. Previous literature has produced inconclusive evidence, with some studies suggesting that migration reduces income poverty while others show that non-migrants bear a larger work burden to compensate for the loss of migrants' earnings. This paper provides a new unified framework that generates testable predictions of whether migration increases non-migrants' welfare in terms of both consumption and leisure time. Drawing on household panel data in rural Mexico, I find that migration increases non-migrants' consumption, but that this consumption gain cannot be explained by labor supply adjustments. Migration improves left-behinds' welfare through two different channels: (i) migrants' remittances exceed their forgone income contribution to the origin household; and (ii) the out-migration of a farmer increases the marginal productivity of agricultural labor for those left behind in the farm.

Keywords: migration; labor supply; welfare; remittances; consumption; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J22 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-int, nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published as 'On the Joint Consumption and Labour Supply Effects of Migration on those Left Behind' in: Journal of Development Studies, 2020, 56 (1), 129 - 150

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