Why Migrants' Remittances Reduce Income Inequality in some Countries and not in Others?

Christian Hubert Ebeke () and Maëlan Le Goff ()

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: According to the literature, the effect of remittances on income inequality in origin countries of migrants is not clear, whatever empirical approach is used. Aiming at clearing up this ambiguity, some authors took into account the historical, social or economic context of the home countries considered. The underlying idea of most of these studies is actually that the impact of remittances on income inequality depends on whom migrates, i.e. on the location migrants occupy in income distribution in their home country. However, to our knowledge, no macroeconomic study examining the remittances effect on inequality, consider the composition of migratory flows. To reveal at the macroeconomic level the position of migrants in income distribution at origin, we introduce in our equation of inequality non-linearities in the level of development of the recipient countries, in the costs of migration and in the level of brain drain. Using a panel sample of 80 developing countries over the period 1970-2000, and even by factoring in the endogeneity of remittances, this paper provides evidence of some characteristics of countries of origin in which there is an inequality-decreasing effect of remittances on income inequality. It turns out that countries belonging to the Mediterranean Basin have the characteristics revealed.

Keywords: Migrants' remittances; Income; migration costs; Brain drain; income inequality; instrumental variables; Mediterranean basin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01-10
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00554277
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00554277/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Why Migrants' Remittances Reduce Income Inequality in some Countries and not in Others? (2011)
Working Paper: Why Migrants' Remittances Reduce Income Inequality in some Countries and not in Others? (2009)
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:hal:wpaper:halshs-00554277

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().