Are Remittances Spent in a Healthy Way? Evidence from Albania

Ermira Kalaj

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Using household survey data for Albania, the paper investigates the effect of remittances on health capital accumulation. Total expenditure is divided into two categories: expenditure on medicines and expenditure on visits and laboratory services. The estimation is presented for two separate sub-groups, rural and urban area. In the paper both instrumental variable and propensity score matching are used to give answer to the research question about the impact of remittances in the health capital investment. The findings indicate that households increase their expenditure for medicines and other health services in the presence of remittance income. The positive relationship is statistically significant in the case of remittance receiving households living in the rural area. The magnitude is lower in the case of total expenditure for visits and laboratory. However, total expenditure for visits and laboratory are likely to have significant impact on the health outcome given their prevention nature. These findings show that remittance flows pay a heterogeneous role in the decision making process of remittance-receiving household members. However, these non-labor income flows may play an important role in supporting expenditures, especially for those living in rural areas.

Keywords: remittances; health expenditure; instrumental variable (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 F24 I15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49172/1/MPRA_paper_49172.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are remittances spent in a healthy way? Evidence from Albania (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:pra:mprapa:49172

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().