Migration and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Mexico

By M. Angelucci. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2013

231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This paper shows that poor households’ entitlement to an exogenous, temporary, but guaranteed income stream increases Mexican migration to the United States, although this income is mainly consumed. Some households use the entitlement to this income stream as collateral to finance the migration. The new migrations come from previously constrained individuals and households and worsen migrant skills. In sum, financial constraints to international migration are binding for poor Mexicans, some of whom would like to migrate but cannot afford to. As growth and antipoverty and microfinance programs relax financial constraints for the poor, low-skilled Mexican migration to the United States will likely increase.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a706418322432d557ed7203c1179646e1e48592

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Citations in the corpus

Agricultural productivity and the sectoral reallocation of labor in rural India (2018, background): “As the literature on migration has pointed out, labor reallocation could follow positive income shocks if there are large upfront costs to moving sectors or migrating (Munshi, 2003; Bryan, Chowdhury, and Mobarak, 2014; Kleemans, 2014; Angelucci, 2015; Bazzi, 2016).”
Does Development Reduce Migration? (2014, result): “Both Azuara (2009) and Angelucci (2013) find that conditional cash transfers in Mexico caused higher migration rates from poor rural communities, contradicting earlier work by Steckov et al.”
International Migration: Trends, Determinants, and Policy Effects (2019, result): “This is in line with evidence from other world regions confirming that the effects of social security schemes and public services can significantly differ for short- and long-distance migration (Angelucci 2015; Phan 2012; Stecklov et al. 2005; Massey et al. 2010).”
Location, search costs and youth unemployment: experimental evidence from transport subsidies (2018, unknown): “…like job search, entails costs that can be too high or too risky to pay for cash constrained individuals (Bryan et al., 2014; Ardington et al., 2009; Angelucci, 2015).6 Just as migration costs impede the efficient allocation of labour across space, I find evidence for frictions within urban…”
Wealth Heterogeneity and the Income Elasticity of Migration (2017, background): “For example, Angelucci (2015) and Bryan et al. (2014) find a large increase in labor emigration among very poor, rural households in response to cash transfers.”