Do Migrants Send Remittances as a Way of Self-Insurance? Evidence from a Representative Immigrant Survey

Catia Batista and Janis Umblijs ()
Additional contact information
Janis Umblijs: Institute for Social Research, Oslo

No 7984, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Do migrants send remittances as a way of obtaining insurance? While this motive is theoretically suggested in the literature, the question of identifying this relationship empirically has only begun to be explored. Using a unique representative survey of 1500 immigrants in the Greater Dublin Area, Ireland, we find a positive and significant relationship between risk aversion and remittance behavior. Risk-averse individuals are more likely to send remittances home and are, on average, likely to remit a higher amount, after controlling for a broad range of individual and group characteristics. Consistent with a "purchase of self-insurance" motive to remit, we also provide evidence of more remittances sent by risk averse immigrants facing higher wage risks and remitting to individuals with more financial resources.

Keywords: migration; risk aversion; remittances; insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 F22 F24 J01 J08 J15 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2014-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias, nep-int and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published - published in: Oxford Economic Papers, 2016, 68 (1), 108-130.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7984.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Migrants Send Remittances as a Way of Self-Insurance? Evidence from a Representative Immigrant Survey (2014)
Working Paper: Do Migrants Send Remittances as a Way of Self-Insurance? Evidence from a Representative Immigrant Survey (2014)
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:iza:izadps:dp7984

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().