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“To Have and Have Not”: International Migration, Poverty, and Inequality in Algeria
Author(s) -
Margolis David N.,
Miotti Luis,
Mouhoud El Mouhoub,
Oudinet Joel
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the scandinavian journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.725
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1467-9442
pISSN - 0347-0520
DOI - 10.1111/sjoe.12103
Subject(s) - counterfactual thinking , poverty , gini coefficient , inequality , economics , demographic economics , descriptive statistics , development economics , economic inequality , geography , econometrics , economic growth , statistics , mathematics , psychology , mathematical analysis , social psychology
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 complemented 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 percent, 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.