To Have and Have Not": Migration, Remittances, Poverty and Inequality in Algeria

In this paper, using an original survey, we analyze the distributional impact of international migration across two regions of Algeria. A semi-parametric descriptive analysis is comple- mented with a parametric model. Remittances do not significantly change the Gini coefficient in nearly any of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc
Main Authors Margolis, David N, Miotti, Luis, Mouhoud, El Mouhoub, Oudinet, Joël
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 01.01.2015
Subjects
Migration
Poverty
Remittances
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Summary:In this paper, using an original survey, we analyze the distributional impact of international migration across two regions of Algeria. A semi-parametric descriptive analysis is comple- mented with a parametric model. Remittances do not significantly change the Gini coefficient in nearly any of the counterfactual scenarios. However, migration reduced poverty by 40 per- cent, with different effects across regions for extreme poverty. Foreign transfers, especially foreign pensions, have a strong positive impact on very poor families in one region. Poor families in the other region suffer from a "double loss": their migrants do not provide local income and they do not send much money home.