Remittances and fertility in Jamaica

ABSTRACT

While Jamaica’s fertility rate has been declining, remittance inflows have been increasing. To elucidate the empirical causal impact of remittances on fertility in Jamaica, we test for cointegration with structural break and by bounds testing using annual data from 1976 to 2019. There are two key findings. First, we find cointegration running from remittances to the fertility rate. Second, we find that after controlling for potentially confounding factors, increases in remittances are associated with a decline in the fertility rate in the long run. Important attendant policy implications arising are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Fertility
• remittances
• Jamaica
• ARDL

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• F22
• F24
• J13

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The dataset is available upon request.

Notes

¹ For example, we wanted to include health care expenditure, but data are only available after the year 2000.