Given the growing importance of rural-urban migration with remittances to rural development and urban income inequality, this paper proposes a theoretical model to investigate unskilled migration with remittances and the relevant welfare implications. Migrants remit part of their wage incomes to support their families of origin out of distinct motivations. The adequate explanation for this behavior may be “enlightened self-interest.” Alongside that, we introduce the mental cost of migration, which means that both migrants and remaining members suffer when migrants leave their families and generate the utility loss. We then construct a modified Melitz model with these ingredients to examine the urbanization process and corresponding welfare issues. The results show that when the remittance increases, it will enlarge the inequality between entrepreneurs and migrant workers. Moreover, when the trade cost is relatively small, the average utility level of migrant households is increasing in the remittance rate. Finally, we employ a numerical approach to simulate the optimal remittance rate and compare the results of different scenarios.

鉴于汇款对农村发展和城市收入不平等的城乡迁移日益重要，本文提出了一种理论模型来研究有汇款的非熟练移民及其相关的福利意义。移民出于不同的动机而将其部分工资收入用于支持其原籍家庭。对此行为的充分解释可能是“开明的自我利益”。除此之外，我们介绍了移民的精神成本，这意味着移民和剩余成员在移民离开家人并造成效用损失时都会遭受痛苦。然后，我们使用这些成分构建改良的Melitz模型，以研究城市化过程和相应的福利问题。结果表明，当汇款额增加时，它将扩大企业家与农民工之间的不平等。而且，当贸易成本相对较小时，移民家庭的平均使用水平在汇款率中正在增加。最后，我们采用数值方法来模拟最佳汇款率，并比较不同方案的结果。