The impact of the EAEU common labor market on the well-being of households of migrants: The case of Armenia

Abstract

We study the impact of migration policy liberalization under the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) on the welfare of households in sending country-members. We use the example of the Republic of Armenia. The Integrated Survey of the Living Standards of Households in Armenia for 2013–2017 is the informational basis of the study. Using the difference-in-differences approach, we identify a statistically significant causal relationship between joining the EAEU and the well-being of households. Armenia’s accession to the EAEU in 2015 made it possible to reduce the risk of poverty of labor migrant households by 2.5 percentage points, and the risk of acute poverty by 4.5 percentage points. The results prompt for further harmonization of the labor migration legislation of the participating countries, and the formation and mutual offset of pension rights of labor migrants within the EAEU in particular.

The effect of creating a single EAEU labor market on the level of financial well-being of migrant households (exemplified by the Republic of Armenia)

“…This method makes it possible to obtain an unbiased estimate of an event or program by considering the non-random selection. A detailed justification of the relevance of the methodology to the data used and its description are presented in the article (Denisova et al 2022).…”

“…where W is an indicative variable of affiliation with the intervention (W = 1) or control (W = 0) groups, Y1 is a measurement of the result after and Y0 is a measurement of the result before, X -covariates, controlling which allows to ensure the condition of parallel trends. Following the methodology (Denisova et al 2022), we define the control group in two ways: 1) broad definition -households without migrants; 2) narrow definition -households with migrants outside Russia, but in other countries or regions of the Republic of Armenia.…”

“…The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of a single labor market within the EAEU on the financial well-being of migrant households in the Republic of Armenia. The study is a further continuation of the study (Denisova et al 2022), which also analyzed the effect of this mechanism on indicators of subjective well-being of migrant households. In this paper, the effect found will be tested against household income data.…”

“…The Republic of Armenia was also selected for several reasons. On the one hand, it is one of the countries that most intensively sends labor migrants to Russia (Denisova et al 2022), and the income of the Armenian migrant households is largely formed by workers' remittances to their homeland (World Bank 2019). On the other hand, the Republic of Armenia is a country with an ambiguous position in relation to the membership in the Union.…”