International remittances and fertility: evidence from remittance-dependent countries
摘要
The socioeconomic effects of international remittances are well documented, and the related literature is growing rapidly. Nonetheless, the impact of these inflows on fertility remains underexplored, particularly in countries that rely heavily on remittances. This study employs Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) to investigate the impact of remittances on fertility rates across nine selected countries in Asia, Latin America, and North Africa from 1990 to 2022. Our findings highlight two key points. First, the MMQR results indicate that remittances have a statistically significant negative effect on fertility across all quantiles, supporting the substitution effect. Second, this negative effect becomes more pronounced at higher quantiles, suggesting that remittances have a more substantial negative influence on fertility in countries with high fertility rates. A set of robustness tests confirms our baseline results.