The Effects of Migration and Remittances in Rural Moldova

Eugene Hristev, Georgeta Mincu, Maya Sandu and Mateusz Walewski

No 389, CASE Network Studies and Analyses from CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research

Abstract: Remittances in Moldova reach 36% of GDP, hence they constitute an essential part of the Moldovan economy. The most visible characteristic of remittances is their unequal distribution. The analysis applying the standard Lorenz Curve proves that 75% receiving households gets only 25% of total amount being sent to the country. The way remittances are distributed does not seem to be random. Higher amounts go in general to younger and more educated households. Remittances strongly influence the economic potential of households, especially if they are high enough. They often constitute the main source of households' income, but they not discourage the members of receiving households from economic activity. It indicates that migration and working abroad is the manifest of economic activity, on the other hand it suggest that lack of employment opportunities in the country is an important reason for migration. Those who obtain remittances tend to have higher share of investments in their total household spending. Significant share of remittances for all groups is spent on education - the basic investment increasing the future competitiveness. In rural areas remittances are much more often used to improve the quality of farms than to start running other businesses. It seems that lack of infrastructure and good governance is the main reason for which educated and young emigrants sending significant amounts of money do not decide to invest them in entrepreneurial activities. Eradicating these impediments for local development should be become a highest priority.

Keywords: Moldova; migrations; remittances; labor market; welfare; rural areas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F24 I31 J21 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 Pages
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-mig and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://case-research.eu/upload/publikacja_plik/25599090_CNSA_389_June24.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sec:cnstan:0389

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CASE Network Studies and Analyses from CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marta Kowerko (marta.kowerko@case-research.eu).