Remittance Behaviours Among Recent Immigrants in Canada

Grant Schellenberg and Rene Houle

Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series from Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch

Abstract:

Remittances "the money immigrants send to family members in their country of origin" are now centre stage in development and immigrant research. Yet, in spite of this interest, research on the characteristics of remittance senders in Canada remains quite limited, in large part because of the absence of household survey data. More broadly, studies of remittance senders in Canada and elsewhere often focus on immigrants from only one or two source countries and, consequently, do not provide a broad cross-national perspective on the issue. This study addresses these gaps by using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada to document the incidence of remitting and the amounts remitted by immigrants from a wide range of countries. Using a common set of concepts and methods, we find that the incidence of remitting by the 2000 to 2001 landing cohort ranges from less than 10% to 60% across immigrants from different countries, while the average annual amounts remitted range from about $500 to almost $3,000. Turning to the factors associated with remitting, the financial and family characteristics are consistently significant among immigrants from all world regions. In contrast, other factors, such as gender and education, are associated with remitting among immigrants from some regions but not from others.

Keywords: Ethnic diversity and immigration; Household; family and personal income; Immigrants and non-permanent residents; Income; pensions; spending and wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-07-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:stc:stcp3e:2008312e

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