The impact of remittances on poverty and human capital : evidence from Latin American household surveys

This paper explores the impact of remittances on poverty, education, and health in 11 Latin American countries using nationally representative household surveys and making an explicit attempt to account for one of the inherent costs associated with migration-the potential income that the migrant may have made at home. The main findings of the study are the following: (1) regardless of the counterfactual used remittances appear to lower poverty levels in most recipient countries; (2) yet despite this general tendency, the estimated impacts tend to be modest; and (3) there is significant country heterogeneity in the poverty reduction impact of remittances'flows. Among the aspects that have been identified in the paper that may leadto varying outcomes across countries are the percentage of households reporting remittances income, the share of remittances of recipient households belonging to the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, and the relative importance of remittances flows with respect to GDP. While remittances tend to have positive effects on education and health, this impact is often restricted to specific groups of the population.Population Policies,Remittances,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Achieving Shared Growth,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping

What is the impact of international remittances on poverty and inequality in Latin America ?

Workers'remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have increased growth and reduced inequality and poverty. These results are robust to the use of different instruments that attempt to correct for the potential endogeneity of remittances. Household survey-based estimates for 10 LAC countries confirm that remittances have negative albeit relatively small inequality and poverty-reducing effects, even after imputations for the potential home earnings of migrants.Population Policies,Remittances,Inequality,Achieving Shared Growth,Poverty Impact Evaluation

Composite Fading Models based on Inverse Gamma Shadowing: Theory and Validation

We introduce a general approach to characterize composite fading models based on inverse gamma (IG) shadowing. We first determine to what extent the IG distribution is an adequate choice for modeling shadow fading, by means of a comprehensive test with field measurements and other distributions conventionally used for this purpose. Then, we prove that the probability density function and cumulative distribution function of any IG-based composite fading model are directly expressed in terms of a Laplace-domain statistic of the underlying fast fading model and, in some relevant cases, as a mixture of wellknown state-of-the-art distributions. Also, exact and asymptotic expressions for the outage probability are provided, which are valid for any choice of baseline fading distribution. Finally, we exemplify our approach by presenting several application examples for IG-based composite fading models, for which their statistical characterization is directly obtained in a simple form.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Pension funds and national saving

The authors conduct an empirical study on the effect of the accumulation of pension fund financial assets, on national saving, using a panel of 43 industrial, and developing countries. The authors find evidence suggesting that the accumulation of pension fund financial assets might increase national saving, when these funds are the result of a mandatory pension program. By contrast, national saving might be unaffected, when pension funds are the result of a public program, implemented to foster voluntary pension saving.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Contractual Savings,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Investment&Savings,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Contractual Savings