The Impact of Migration on Well-Being in a Remittances Dependent Economy

Anotace: The aim of this study is to examine the impact of migration on migrant-sending communities. The particular attention is drawn to the well-being of households residing in Central Asia, where migration is a crucial issue due to constant and high outflow of labor force. More specifically, in an attempt to determine the extent to which international migration influences subjective well-being of household members left behind, the research uses panel data collected in Tajikistan from 2007 to 2011. The results indicate that, on average, there is a positive relationship between migration of a family member and improvements in satisfaction with life as-a-whole and current financial situation of those who are staying behind. The positive effects are even more pronounced when the sample is restricted to migrant-sending households that receive remittances. The further split-sample analysis also documents that the impact of migration appears to be heterogeneous across different economic and geographic contexts.