Remittances and poverty in Ghana

By R. H. Adams. 2006

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The author uses a large, nationally representative household survey to analyze the impact of internal remittances (from Ghana) and international remittances (from African and other countries) on poverty in Ghana. With only one exception, he finds that both types of remittances reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in Ghana. But the size of the poverty reduction depends on how poverty is being measured. The author finds that poverty is reduced more when international, as opposed to internal, remittances are included in household income, and when poverty is measured by the more sensitive poverty measures-poverty gap and squared poverty gap. For example, the squared poverty gap measure shows that including international remittances in household expenditure (income) reduces the severity of poverty by 34.8 percent, while including internal remittances in such income reduces the severity of poverty by only 4.1 percent. International remittances reduce the severity of poverty more than internal remittances because of the differential impact of these two types of remittances on poor households. Households in the poorest decile group receive 22.7 percent of their total household expenditure (income) from international remittances, as opposed to only 13.8 percent of such income from internal remittances. When these"poorest of the poor"households receive international 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 both the number and distance of poor households beneath the poverty line.

Subfields: Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a285ff03a30d5c52395e570fcfed7347346cfb8e

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Citations in the corpus

Effect of Remittances on Poverty and Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (2009, methodology): “For instance, part of the recent increase in remittances might merely reflect improved data reporting as in the case of Ghana, Senegal, and Uganda.”
Remittances flow and financial development in Bangladesh (2011, background): “Adams (2006) also finds a substantial improvement of poverty situation of the ‘poorest of the poor’ due to inflow of remittances while using large household survey in Ghana.”
Impact of Migration on Economic and Social Development: A Review of Evidence and Emerging Issues (2011, background): “…America, Africa, South Asia and other regions suggests that remittances reduce the depth and severity of poverty, as well as indirectly stimulate economic activity (Adams 1991, Lachaud 1999, Fajnzylber & Lopez 2007, Adams 2006b, Gupta et al. 2007, Anyanwu and Erhijakpor 2010, Ajayi et al. 2009).”
Remittances and Poverty in Ghana (2009, unknown): “This section presents the estimates of equation (3) using both the cross-section data from GLSS5 and the pseudo-panel data constructed from GLSS3-GLSS5.”
Impact of remittances on household income, asset and human capital: evidence from Sri Lanka (2012, background): “In later studies in Guatemala and Ghana, (Adams, 2004; 2006) found evidence that though international remittance income helped reduce the level, depth and severity of poverty; they had a greater impact on reducing the severity as opposed to the level of poverty, where the severity of poverty is meas”
The Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth and Development in Africa (2008, unknown): “Based on household survey data from various African countries, few empirical studies have investigated the role of remittances in reducing poverty (Lucas and Stark, 1985; Adams, 1991; Sander, 2004; Azam and Gubert, 2005; Adams, 2006).”