Accounting for Remittance and Migration Effects on Children’s Schooling

SummaryWe examine the impact of remittances on children’s school attendance in the Dominican Republic. To isolate the effect of remittances from the effect of sometimes concurrent household out-migration, we focus on children in households without members currently residing in the United States. While girls’ school attendance rises with the receipt of remittances, secondary school-age children and younger siblings are the ones who most decidedly gain from remittances. Additionally, we find that migration negatively impacts the school attendance of children as it eliminates the positive effect of remittances when we expand the sample to include children in households with members residing abroad.