Abstract

The author uses data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey in 2014 to investigate the impact of remittances on poverty and inequality. Unlike other studies that use income to measure poverty, we employ monthly per capita consumption. We also consider remittances as a substitute income rather than an exogenous transfer. Therefore, imputing counterfactual expenditure in a scenario of no migration no remittances is necessary. To test for selection, a Heckman model is required under the null hypothesis that non-recipient households are randomly drawn from the population. Contrary to some previous studies, we find significant effect of selection bias and evidence that remittances reduce the poverty rate by 2 percent on the national level or 5 percent for recipient households. Furthermore, remittances decrease the poverty gap by 2.5 percent or 6.6 percent for a sub-sample of recipient households, but they also increase inequality by 1 percent, as measured by the GINI coefficient.

摘要

作者使用 2014 年柬埔寨社会经济调查的数据调查汇款对贫困和不平等的影响。与其他使用收入衡量贫困的研究不同，我们使用月人均消费。我们还将汇款视为替代收入，而不是外生转移。因此，有必要在没有移民没有汇款的情况下估算反事实支出。为了检验选择，在非受助家庭是从人口中随机抽取的原假设下，需要一个 Heckman 模型。与之前的一些研究相反，我们发现选择偏差有显着影响，并且有证据表明汇款在全国范围内将贫困率降低了 2%，或将接收家庭的贫困率降低了 5%。此外，汇款将贫困差距缩小了 2.5%，即 6%。