Remittances and labor supply of the left-behind youth: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This paper examines whether remittances from international migration impact on the occupational choice of left-behind youth in Kyrgyzstan. Labor supply is analyzed both at the extensive and intensive margins using cross-sectional data for 2011. To overcome endogeneity concerns, an instrumental variable approach was implemented. Findings demonstrate that migration, rather than remittances, pushes the left-behind youth to become unpaid family workers. This is explained by the substitution effect as the youth left behind are called upon to replace the migrant labor. Moreover, this effect is heterogeneous – female youth are more inclined to becoming unpaid family workers both at the extensive and intensive margins.

International remittances and nonfarm entrepreneurship among the left‐behind: Evidence from Nepal

“…A gender-specific analysis reveals that these results were driven by the women population; that is, higher remittances induced women to reduce the labor they supplied to nonfarm self-employment (by 3.6 hr per week, on average) as well as to other core economic activities. This finding corroborates evidence from Kyrgyzstan (Dávalos et al, 2017), Egypt (Binzel & Assaad, 2011), and Armenia (Grigorian & Melkonyan, 2011), who found a reduction in hours supplied in general. Similarly, evidence from Cambodia points to a negative impact of international migration on wage work and a positive impact on unpaid family work, as well as a negative impact on labor-force participation (Roth & Tiberti, 2017).…”

Can Labor Emigration Affect the Education of Girls? Evidence from Tajikistan

“…Hongqin Chang, Xiao-yuan Dong, and Fiona MacPhail (2011) corroborate the latter observation, showing that in China, parental migration leads to a greater increase in domestic and farmwork among girls (and elderly women) as compared to boys (and elderly men). The same holds true for Kyrgyzstan, where Jorge Dávalos et al (2017) show that girls are disproportionately more inclined to perform unpaid family work in migrant households. Similarly, a study on Georgia points out that male migration widens gender differences with respect to the division of household tasks (Torosyan, Gerber, and Goñalons-Pons 2016).…”

“…On the other hand, the out-migration of household members may result in a reduction in the supervision of children and/or more work at home for children staying behind, as a study for Albania shows (Giannelli and Mangiavacchi 2010). Typically, girls have to take over domestic chores and the burden of caring duties, which might negatively affect their school attendance (McKenzie and Rapoport 2011;Dávalos et al 2017). 2 David McKenzie and Hillel Rapoport (2011), for example, report a statistically significant negative effect of migration on the school attendance of 16-18-year-old girls in Mexico.…”

Picking the Right Arrow for the Target: Modelling the Economic Impact of Remittance on Agribusinesss Entreprenuership and Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…It is also prominent in empirical analysis of emigration effects on labour market outcomes and female force participation in the carribean countries (Asteriou & Hall, 2015). The studies conclude that international migration exerts a negative influence on responsiveness of households to labour supply markets (Cooray, 2012;Dávalos, Karymshakov, Sulaimanova, & Abdieva, 2017). This conclusion could be somewhat biased because the non-responsiveness of households to labour markets could be attributed to decisions concurrently made with other related household factors which has no direct relationship with migration (Demurger & Li, 2013).…”