International Migration, Remittances, and Schooling: Evidence from El Salvador

Alejandra Cox Edwards and Manuelita Ureta

No 9766, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine the effect of remittances from abroad on households' schooling decisions using data for El Salvador. Following the massive war-related emigration of the 1980's, remittances became a significant source of household income throughout the 1990's. We use the Cox proportional hazard model to examine the determinants of school attendance. Measuring income from a source that is uncorrelated with parental schooling remittances , we find that remittances have a large, significant effect on school retention. We estimate that while household income net of remittances has a small, though significant, impact on the hazard of leaving school in rural and urban areas, remittances have a much larger impact on the hazard of leaving school. In urban areas, the effect of remittances is, at its smallest, 10 times the size of the effect of other income. In rural areas, the effect of remittances is about 2.6 times that of other income. Our finding is of interest in that it suggests that subsidizing school attendance, particularly in poor areas, may have a large impact on school attendance and retention, even if parents have low levels of schooling.

JEL-codes: F22 I22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06
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Published as Edwards, Alejandra Cos and Manuelita Ureta. "International Migration, Remittances, And Schooling: Evidence From El Salvador," Journal of Development Economics, 2003, v72(2,Dec), 429-461.

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