The shadow value of migrant remittances, income and inequality in a household-farm economy

Abstract

This article offers econometric evidence that income remittances sent home by family migrants stimulate household-farm incomes indirectly by relieving credit and risk constraints on household-farm production. A high but unequally distributed shadow value of migrant remittances appears to reinforce an equalising direct effect of remittances on the income distribution across a sample of household-farms in rural Mexico.