Migrants remittances and fertility in the Post-Soviet states

ABSTRACT

The demographic consequences of remittance flows to the developing countries have so far received scant attention. In this study, we examine the impact of migrants’ remittances on fertility by employing unbalanced panel data from Post-Soviet states. During the last three decades, these countries witnessed large-scale out-migration accompanied by high inflows of migrants’ remittances, and went from a high mortality – high birth rate to a low mortality – low birth rate regime. Employing standard panel estimation methods and instrumental variable (IV) approach, we find evidence for a significant negative association between remittances and fertility. These findings are robust to alternate measures and strategies. The impact of remittances is significant beyond a minimum threshold and has strengthened over time. The findings of the study highlight the remittances’ substitution effect contributing to the post-communist countries’ demographic transition.

KEYWORDS:

• Fertility
• demography
• population
• migrants
• remittances
• Post-Soviet states

Acknowledgment

This study benefited from discussions with the participants of 12th annual meeting of the Armenian Economic Association (ArmEA), Yerevan, Armenia, 10th annual Migration Conference (TMC), Rabat, Morocco, 2022 Tashkent Business and Economics Conference (TBEC), Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the Central Asian Regional Round Table on Demographic Resilience by UNFPA Eastern Europe and Central Asia and University of Westminster, Tashkent on 18th November 2022, 24th International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, Moscow, Russia, and the annual ISE Applied Economics workshop, Almaty, Kazakhstan. We would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief Richard Connolly and the anonymous referees for their constructive feedback. All the errors in the paper are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Other states are dropped due to low rates of outmigration or low share of remittances in the GDP.

2. The estimated sample is unbalanced, and the limited availability of data on the variable of interest and some of the controls for some states decreases the sample size. The final sample excludes states that due to low rates of out-migration or low share of remittances in the GDP.

3. Controls include GDP per capita, secondary school enrollment, contraceptive prevalence rate, weighted fertility rate of the host country, women percentage, female labor force participation, and whether the home country government has any fertility policy.

4. In the presence of son preference, couples conscious of family size may go for sex-selective abortion if the firstborn is a girl (Javed & Mughal, 2022).

5. We are thankful to the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.