Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/105818 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 1433
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
It is often assumed that international labor migration from Tajikistan, while having no noticeable effects on investment (usually defined as medium and long-term con- sumption, such as education, or investment into housing or business), on average leads to an increase in short-term consumption, mostly food. In this paper, a simple household-level model determining the migration decision is developed and tested empirically. In a second step, the effect of low-skilled labor migration on household expenditure shares is analyzed using 2SLS. While only weak effects of migration measured by a simple dummy are visible, repeating the analysis using the length of the migration spell instead, as well as its squared term, reveals that labor migration apparently takes a while to "kick in" and become profitable to those remaining at home. The observed long-term effects on household consumption patterns, albeit being rather small, actually speak in favour of investment of remittances, with the respective shares increasing over time, while the budget share spent on food slowly decreases.
Subjects: 
labor migration
remittances
consumption shares
Tajikistan
JEL: 
J61
F22
I31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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