Impact of migration on the well-being of left-behind children

Increasing numbers of Sri Lanka women are migrating for overseas employment as domestic workers. Consequently, transnational families in which mothers are absent for a significant part of the growing up of their children are increasingly common. Although these migrants and the country receive economic benefits, their migration involves social costs such as denounced living and working conditions of women abroad, harmful consequences of the long-term separation of mothers on the well-being of children and other family members and broken marriages due to prolonged separation from their spouses. Therefore, investigation of both economic benefits and social costs of women’s migration and identification of specific strategies that could be used to minimize social costs and maximize economic benefits would be worthwhile. This paper reports the findings of the survey done in 2008 by interviewing 400 migrant families and focus group discussions to investigate the economic and social impact of Sri Lankan transnational domestic workers on families in Sri Lanka. It first explains the background information of migrants and methodology of the study. Next, it examines the economic and social impact of their migration on families. It concludes with some policy recommendations based on the findings of the survey.

Abstract
This paper investigates the effect of international remittances and migration on household welfare in Ethiopia. A subjective (a household’s subjective economic well-being) and objective measures (asset holdings and asset accumulation) to define household welfare. A matching approach is applied to address self-selection, and by exploiting information before and after the households began receiving remittances, the study sheds light on the changes in welfare associated with international migration and remittances. The results reveal that remittances have a significant impact on a welfare variable that has previously not received much attention in the migration literature, namely household subjective economic well-being. In addition, we find that remittances have positive effects on consumer asset accumulation, especially in rural areas, but no effect on productive assets.
Keywords: remittances, migration, Ethiopia, propensity score matching

Although there is substantial existing research on the relationships between labor migration and children's schooling, this research typically has emphasized the migrant versus non-migrant dichotomy. Labor migrants, however, are a diverse group: depending on their skills, networks, and available opportunities, some are economically more successful than others. In this paper, we examine the association between diverse conceptualizations of male labor migration and an important family outcome: the discontinuation of children’s schooling. The setting for our analyses is rural southern Mozambique, an area characterized by massive male labor migration, mainly to South Africa. The data come from a multi-wave panel study that has been monitoring rural women's reproductive health and well-being, their children's schooling, and their experience with male labor migration since 2006. We examine male migration success and accrued migration experience, and find that both are positively associated with children's schooling.

Context: Studies on economic well-being and use of remittances are often limited to international migration and less on internal migration. But the remittances flow within and among the states of India is large and often linked to the diversity in demographic and socio-economic development. Though the issue of remittances is central to internal migration in India, there is no study that systematically examines the economic gain and use of remittances in states of India.
Objective: The aim of this paper is to examine the economic wellbeing and spending behavior of households that receive remittances and those who do not receive remittances in states of India.
Data and Methods: The unit data from 64th round, schedule 10.2 of National Sample Survey 2007-08 that covered employment, unemployment and migration particulars of 125,578 households in the country is used in the analyses. The households are classified into two groups; remittances receiving and non-remittances household based on the receipt of remittances from migrant member of the households in one year prior to survey. Economic wellbeing is measured in terms of monthly percapita consumer expenditure and pattern of household spending on food, education, health and consumer durables. The average and marginal spending behavior are compared for remittances receiving