Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

Nepal is experiencing massive out-migration as an important livelihood strategy and has thus become increasingly dependent on remittances as an important source of income. The consequences of high levels of migration for both sending and receiving societies are a major concern. The effect of such remittance earnings in migrant sending households depends on whether the income is used for production or consumption. If used solely for consumption, remittances may promote the cycle of dependency and result in a low quality of life. Therefore, measuring utilization patterns by remittance-receiving households using a standard instrument is key to understanding how migrants’ families spend and invest remittance earnings.

This project will create measures of remittances use by remittance-receiving households in a poor rural agrarian setting in Nepal. It will (a) identify household social and economic activities remittances being used by the receiving households, (b) construct the measures of remittance use specific to the research context, and (c) pilot the measures to 200 sample households.

This project also received funding from the Marshall Weinberg Endowment.