| Throughout the history of mankind, people have explored, lived and worked outside the country of their birth. In the recent past, with the widening of income gap between countries, international migration has created explicit development consequences. Citizens of poor countries have gained access to higher income and standards of living of richer countries through international migration. Apart from enjoying higher income themselves, international migrants also remit money to their friends and families back home and act as agents of transmission of new technology, social norms and culture. In this dissertation, I show that these phenomena have far-reaching welfare impacts on migrants, their families and the sending countries, which are both pecuniary and non-pecuniary in nature. In Chapter 1, I study the impacts of international migration on contraceptive use among women in Mexico. Using an instrumental variable strategy to control for potential endogeneity of migration decision, I find that women either belonging to migrant families or having personal migration experience themselves tend to use modern contraceptives significantly more. In Chapter 2, I estimate the impacts of international remittance receipts on health and education of children in Sri Lanka. I use duration of a migrant's stay as an instrument for remittance amount sent home and find that remittance income has a positive and significant impact on Body Mass Index and access to private tuition for the children of recipient families. Finally, in Chapter 3, I show that inflow of international remittance can be a significant source of foreign exchange earning for poor countries and can improve their creditworthiness in the global financial market. |
