Remittances and poverty in Guatemala

Richard Adams ()

No 3418, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The author uses a large, nationally representative household survey to analyze the impact of internal remittances (from Guatemala), and international remittances (from the United States) on poverty in Guatemala. With only one exception, he finds that both internal and international remittances reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in Guatemala. However, he finds that remittances have a greater impact on reducing the severity as opposed to the level of poverty in Guatemala. For example, the squared poverty gap-which measures the severity of poverty-falls by 21.1 percent when internal remittances are included in household income, and by 19.8 percent when international remittances are included in such income. This is true because households in the lowest decile group receive a very large share of their total household income (expenditure) from remittances. Households in the bottom decile group receive between 50 and 60 percent of their total income (expenditure) from remittances. When these"poorest of the poor"households receive remittances, their income status changes dramatically and this in turn has a large effect on any poverty measure-like the squared poverty gap-that considers the number, distance, and distribution of poor households beneath the poverty line.

Keywords: Housing&Human Habitats; Services&Transfers to Poor; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Conditions and Volatility; Health Economics&Finance; Poverty Lines; VN-Acb Mis -- IFC-00535908; Safety Nets and Transfers; Economic Conditions and Volatility; PovertyAssessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (83)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/3418WPS.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:3418

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().