The Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Inequality in Ghana
By R. H. Adams, Alfredo Cuecuecha, J. Page. 2008
154 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This paper uses a new, 2005/06 nationally-representative household survey to analyze the impact of internal remittances (from Ghana) and international remittances (from African and other countries) on poverty and inequality in Ghana. To control for selection and endogeneity, it uses a two-stage multinomial logit model with instrumental variables focusing on variations in migration networks and remittances among various ethno-religious groups in Ghana. The paper finds that both internal and international remittances reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in Ghana. However, the size of the poverty reduction depends on the type of remittances received. In general, poverty in Ghana is reduced more by international than internal remittances. For households receiving international remittances, the level of poverty falls by 88.1 percent with the inclusion of remittances; for households receiving internal remittances, poverty falls by 69.4 percent with the inclusion of remittances. The paper also finds that both types of remittances increase income inequality in Ghana. For households with internal remittances, the inclusion of remittances causes the Gini coefficient to rise by 4 percent, and for households with international remittances, the inclusion of remittances causes the Gini to increase by 17.4 percent.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5c6f1f71210fe7576d906d94f0520da593664cf
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Citations in the corpus
- Do remittances improve income inequality? An instrumental variable quantile analysis of the Kenyan case (2016, background): “The second strategy (Barham and Boucher, 1998; Adams et al., 2008; Adams and Cuecuecha, 2010) treats remittances as endogenous and explicitly models the selection bias in migration described above.”
- Characterising the diversity of smallholder farming systems and their constraints and opportunities for innovation: A case study from the Northern Region, Ghana (2016, background): “Migrant households re reportedly smaller [21,2] and labour constrained [1] due to ut-migration of able-bodied household members- characteristics onsistent with Type 6.”