The impacts of international remittances on child human capital accumulation

This paper examines the impacts of international remittances on child human capital investments of households by presenting evidence from Turkey. Remittances by alleviating resource constraints may allow higher consumption and productive investments for the household. On the other hand, migration of the parent which is the source of remittances may have a disrupting effect on family structure and may result in adverse outcomes. After controlling for household wealth, the main observable selection dimension on remitting, average estimates suggest that 6-14 years old girls from recipient households are more likely to attend school and 6-14 years old boys from recipient households are less likely to be illiterate. Lastly, recipient households spend more on secondary school expenses and on any sort of educational purposes. These findings suggest migration and its byproduct remittances as an important policy tool to increase child human capital in low-income households