Migration, remittances and educational outcomes: The case of Haiti

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates how migration and the receipt of remittances affect educational outcomes in Haiti. Based on a theoretical approach it tries to disentangle the effects of both phenomena that have mostly been jointly modeled in previous literature. The results suggest that remittances play an important role for poor households in alleviating budget constraints. Household wealth, captured via an asset index, is found to have a significant impact on education as well, supporting the idea that budget constraints play a crucial role in schooling decisions in Haiti.

Introduction

Migration and remittances constitute a thematic constellation that has gained a lot of attention in recent years. This attention has resulted in a large strand of literature, covering especially the impacts of those phenomena on key development factors in poor countries.

Studies dealing with this issue heavily focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. This might be due to two facts: primarily, migration and remittances play an important role in that region. In 2005, the share of migrants in the entire population amounted to 5.1%, compared to 3% worldwide, and remittances sent to the region rose from 13 billion US$ in 1995 to 60 billion US$ in 2007, constituting up to 20% of the national GDP in some countries with Haiti being one of those (Ratha and Xu, 2008). Secondly, the most important migration corridors out of the region lead to the United States, a fact that implies a clear ‘south to north’ movement pattern (Ratha and Xu, 2008). Thus, Latin American and Caribbean countries provide the opportunity to investigate explicitly the impact of migration from developing to developed countries and of remittances flows in the opposite direction.

Given the increasing importance of migration and remittances, it seems natural to ask if both phenomena are advantageous or detrimental from the poor countries’ perspective. Literature in this context focuses on two main issues: the impact of migration and remittances on poverty and income equality (Acosta et al., 2006, Acosta et al., 2007, Acosta et al., 2008, Adams and Page, 2005, López-Córdova, 2005, Taylor, 1992, Taylor et al., 2005) as well as the impact of both phenomena on children's educational outcomes (Acosta, 2006, Acosta et al., 2007, Amuedo-Dorantes et al., 2008, Calero et al., 2009, Edwards and Ureta, 2003, Hanson and Woodruff, 2003, López-Córdova, 2005, McKenzie and Rapoport, 2006). This paper adds to the latter strand of literature as it investigates the impact of migration and remittances on educational outcomes in Haiti, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and the poorest country in the Latin American/Caribbean region, with half of the households living below the poverty line (Justesen and Verner, 2007). Especially, it is tried to disentangle the effects of both phenomena which have always been captured via a joint variable in previous literature.