Impacts of International and Internal Remittances on Household Welfare: Evidence from Viet Nam

This paper measures the impact of international and internal remittances on household welfare of remittances-receiving households using data from Viet Nam Household Living Standard Surveys 2002 and 2004. It is found that the receiving of international and internal remittances increased both income and consumption expenditures of the recipients. The impact of remittances on non-food expenditures tended to be higher than the impact on food expenditures. For international remittances, the impact on income was much higher than the impact on consumption expenditures. It means that a large proportion of international remittances were used for saving and investment. For the receipt of internal remittances, the impact on income was just slightly larger than the impact on consumption expenditures. In other words, most of the internal remittances were used for consumption expenditures.