Abstract
We examine the remittance behaviour of rural–urban migrants in Vietnam using a unique dataset that links the 2012 round of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) with a 2013 tracer study of migrants from VHLSS households. We estimate factors associated with remittances, taking migrant selection issues into account. Consistent with the altruism hypothesis for remittances, we find that remittance flows are larger when migrants have higher wages and less attachment to the destination, and when rural households have lower per capita earning capacity. We do not find support for a self-interest remittance motive. We also estimate the impacts of net remittances on per capita income in migrant-sending rural households, accounting for the endogeneity of remittances. We find that migration and remittances increase the incomes of rural households. However, the estimated direct income effects are small, and become smaller still as migrants become more established in their new place of residence. Members of ethnic minority groups gain far less than others from migration and remittances. More data and research are needed to broaden these assessments to include non-economic benefits and the costs of migration.
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Notes
- 1.
In fact, as Gibson et al. (2013) have pointed out, there are multiple selection problems: self-selection into migration; the decision of an entire household to move or to leave some members behind; migrants’ decisions to return home; and the timing of migration decisions.
- 2.
We define the HCMC cluster as HCMC itself together with three neighbouring provinces: Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Ba Ria/Vung Tau.
- 3.
Although migrants in Hanoi have much lower average annual family income than migrants in HCMC, the standard deviation of migrants in HCMC is very high.
- 4.
The dependent variable for this probit equals 1 if a rural VHLSS household is in the VRUMS—that is, if this household sends a migrant to either Hanoi or HCMC. It equals zero otherwise.
- 5.
Although we have data on origin households’ income, this variable is not exogenous because of simultaneity, so we do not include it as an explanatory variable.
- 6.
In Niimi et al. (2009), an increase of VND1 million in migrants’ monthly income raises annual remittances by VND600,000.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the VRUMS project for financial support, and Nguyen Phong, Nguyen Manh Hai and their staff at GSO and CIEM, respectively, for outstanding work in the design and conduct of the data-gathering survey. Xin Meng, Bob Gregory, Amy Liu and participants at a conference held in Hanoi in January 2015 provided very helpful comments on an earlier draft. Remaining errors are ours alone.
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Phan, D., Coxhead, I. (2019). Rural–Urban Migration and Remittances in Vietnam: Evidence from Migrant Tracer Data. In: Liu, A., Meng, X. (eds) Rural-Urban Migration in Vietnam. Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94574-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94574-3_7
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