Migrant Remittances During a Global Shock: Evidence From the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico

Ambrosius Christian (), Campos-Vázquez Raymundo M. and Gerardo Esquivel ()
Additional contact information
Ambrosius Christian: Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Latin American Studies and School of Business and Economics, Rüdesheimer Str. 52-54, 14197 Berlin
Campos-Vázquez Raymundo M.: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, Carr. Picacho Ajusco 20, Col. Ampliación Fuentes del Pedregal, 14110, Ciudad de México, México.

IZA Journal of Development and Migration, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 22

Abstract: During a global shock two forces act upon international remittances in opposite directions: income losses among migrants may reduce their ability to send remittances and, at the same time, migrants’ concern for their family's wellbeing may prompt them to send more remittances back home. Which of these drivers prevail is an empirical matter. We assemble quarterly data at the subnational level in Mexico to study the behavior of remittances during the Covid-19 pandemic. We estimate elasticities of remittances with respect to employment conditions at both origin and destination places of Mexican migrants. Our results show that destination country conditions have been the main driver of remittances to Mexico, whereas origin country conditions had no discernible effect on remittances during the pandemic. We also show that contractions in consumption in Mexico are associated with reductions in remittances. We conclude that risk-coping via remittances provides limited protection during global crises.

Keywords: Migration; COVID-19; Remittances; Consumption; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F24 J23 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/izajodm-2023-0002 (text/html)

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:vrs:izajdm:v:14:y:2023:i:1:p:22:n:1

DOI: 10.2478/izajodm-2023-0002

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Development and Migration is currently edited by David A. Lam, Hartmut F. Lehmann and Francesco Pastore

More articles in IZA Journal of Development and Migration from Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().