On the Trail of International Remittances: Some Recent Reflections on the Use of Inflows in Rural Punjab

The paper overviews international remittances receipts by the households and the practices relating to their end-use at the places of origin in rural Punjab. It also examines the role remittances in leveraging the household consumption, investment as well as the local area development. It focuses on remittances for family maintenance and community empowerment. The effect of family remittances (or the migrant worker’s remittances) is examined at the household level. Based on data from a recent survey of 6,500 households, the paper finds that a large section of the households were utilizing remittances for day-to-day household expenses and repayment of outstanding debts. Use of remittances for human development inputs such as education and health was also sizeable. However, insignificant share of households used the remittance for financing of the migration of family members or relatives abroad and for holding of gold, etc. Remittance use was affected by class and class hierarchies with relatively less affluent households receiving regular finance from foreign and using them for more immediate needs. The results also include a link between community remittance and the local area development where large chunk of humanitarian efforts are for religious benevolence, education, recreation, health and rural infrastructure.