Using Mexico's 2002 wave of the Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares (ENIGH), we find that international remittances raise health care expenditures. Approximately 6 pesos of every 100 peso increment in remittance income are spent on health. The sensitivity of health care...

We consider the issue of illegal migration from Mexico to the US, and examine whether the lack of legal status causally impacts on outcomes, specifically wages and remitting behavior. These outcomes are of particular interest given the extent of legal and illegal migration, and the resulting...

In policy discussions, it has frequently been claimed that migrants' remittances could function as a catalyst for financial access among receiving households. This paper provides empirical evidence on this hypothesis from Mexico, a major receiver of remittances worldwide. Using the Mexican...

The assumption that remittances are a substitute for credit has been an implicit or explicit theoretical foundation of many empirical studies on remittances. This paper directly tests this assumption by comparing the response to health-related shocks among national and transnational households...

The current economic slowdown in the United States and the decline in remittance growth to some Latin American countries have intensified the interest in the relationship between these variables. We investigate whether host country conditions affect remittance outflows to Latin America, focusing...

This paper investigates the effect of the US Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) on the remitting patterns of Mexican immigrants. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP128), we find that a significant effect on remittance flows from illegal...

Using a micro-level approach to poverty traps, this paper explores welfare dynamics among households in post-war rural Mozambique. Conceptually, the paper builds on an asset-based approach to poverty and tests empirically, with household panel data, for the existence of a poverty trap. Findings...

Poverty among ethnic minorities and the majority in rural China for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 is investigated taking a dynamic view and using a large sample covering 22 provinces. Based on the National Bureau of Statistics' low income line, almost one-third of the ethnic minorities...

This paper measures the vulnerability of households in rural India, based upon the ICRISAT panel survey. We employ both ex ante and ex post measures of vulnerability. The latter are decomposed into aggregate and idiosyncratic risks and poverty components. Our decomposition shows that...

This paper analyzes the determinants of rural poverty in India, contrasting the situation of the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Schedule Tribe (ST) households with the non-scheduled population. The incidence of poverty among SC and ST households is significantly higher than non-scheduled households....