New evidence on the role of remittances on healthcare expenditures by Mexican households

Amuedo‐Dorantes, Catalina; Pozo, Susan

doi:10.1007/s11150-009-9080-7

“…Health-related outcomes have received considerable attention. The basic idea is that in these countries remittances of migrants to their families left-behind may allow the elderly to have access to better medical care which may positively affect their health (Vanwey 2004;Amuedo-Dorantes and Pozo 2011;Ao et al 2016). Yet, much in contrast to these countries, remittances in China have not contributed to a substantial development of rural areas and have had only limited impact on the welfare of the left-behind (Biao 2007) for much of the income of migrants remains in urban areas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does internal migration affect the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind?

Scheffel

¹

,

Zhang²

2018

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The ageing population resulting from the one-child policy and massive flows of internal migration in China pose major challenges to elderly care in rural areas where elderly support is based on a traditional inter-generational family support mechanism. We use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to examine how migration of an adult child affects the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind. We identify the effects using fixed effects and IV approaches which rely on different sources of variation. We find that migration reduces happiness by 6.6 percentage points and leads to a 3.3 percentage points higher probability of loneliness. CES-D scores of elderly parents are severely increased pushing average scores close to the cut-off indicating clinical levels of depressive symptoms. As emotional health is a key determinant of the overall health status, our findings have significant impacts on economic development in China.

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“…Second, up until the present, migration and remittances have almost exclusively been studied as causally linked to health spending (Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo, 2009;Amuedo-Dorantes, Sainz, & Pozo, 2007;Valero & de Lourdes Treviño, 2010) or health indicators (López-Córdova, 2005;Frank & Hummer, 2002;Zhunio, Vishwasrao, & Chiang, 2012;Hildebrandt & McKenzie, 2005;Kanaiaupuni & Donato, 1999). In fact, increased health spending may not (only) be a voluntary household choice of human capital investment driven by changes in income composition or by migrants' influence on income allocation decisions, as argued by these authors; 1 rather, increased health spending caused by health shocks may create demand for alternative financial sources like credit or remittances by liquidityconstrained households.…”

Section: Introduction and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Are Remittances a Substitute for Credit? Carrying the Financial Burden of Health Shocks in National and Transnational Households

Ambrosius¹,

Cuecuecha²

2013

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The assumption that remittances are a substitute for credit has been an implicit or explicit theoretical foundation of many empirical studies on remittances. This paper directly tests this assumption by comparing the response to health-related shocks among national and transnational households using panel data from Mexico for 2002 and. While the occurrence of serious health shocks that required hospital treatment doubled the average debt burden of exposed households compared to the control group, households with nuclear family members (a parent, child, or spouse) in the US did not increase their debts due to health shocks. This finding is consistent with the view that remittances respond to households' demand for financing emergencies and make them less reliant on debt-financing. Terms of use: Documents in

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“…The relationship between migration and human capital has also been widely examined, particularly the effects of migration on education and health outcomes of the families left behind (Kanaiaupuni and Donato, 1999;Cox Edwards and Ureta, 2003;Mansuri, 2006;Acosta et al, 2007;Nobles, 2007;Amuedo-Dorantes and Pozo, 2009) Type of migration and migrants affect welfare outcomes. Macours and Vakis (2010) find that maternal seasonal migration positively affected early cognitive development in Nicaragua.…”

Section: Welfare Impact: Health and Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informing Migration Policies: A Data Primer

Carletto¹,

Larrison²,

Özden³

2014

Policy Research Working Papers

3

0

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 8745 December 2014 ABSTRACT Informing Migration Policies: A Data PrimerResearchers in many fields, such as demography, economics, and sociology, have established various data collection methodologies and principles to answer a range of academic and policy questions on migration. Although the progress has been impressive, some basic challenges remain. This paper addresses some basic, yet fundamental, questions on identification of international migrants and how their various demographic, personal, and human capital characteristics are captured via different data sources. The critical issues are the construction of proper sampling frames in censuses, registers, and surveys and the design of questionnaires in household, labor market, and other relevant surveys. The paper discusses how these data sources can be used to answer policy questions in areas such as labor markets, education, or poverty. The focus is on how some of the existing shortcomings in availability, quality, and relevance of migration data can be overcome via improvements in data collection methods.JEL Classification: F22, J61, O15

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New evidence on the role of remittances on healthcare expenditures by Mexican households

Cited by 129 publications

References 27 publications

How does internal migration affect the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind?

How does internal migration affect the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind?

Are Remittances a Substitute for Credit? Carrying the Financial Burden of Health Shocks in National and Transnational Households

Informing Migration Policies: A Data Primer

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