Abstract

A boost in the scale and complexity of international migration flows have occurred in the last decades. Movements of large numbers of people may produce welfare gains to families and communities left behind. This thesis analyses the implications of migration on well-being of sending societies, adopting a household-level perspective and addressing two specific issues: the impact of remittances on health consumption decisions of relatives left behind, and the role of migration as risk management strategy in response to natural shock exposure. The effect of international remittances on household healthcare consumption is tested using data from the “Peruvian National Survey of Households”. Remittances positively impact on healthcare consumption shares and this propensity is independent of the occurrence of a health shock, confirming the importance of migrant transfers for human capital accumulation. In the second part, I identify whether and under which circumstances migration represents a coping strategy to deal with sudden onset climatic shocks, examining the case of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua. The findings obtained show that shock severity does not act as push factor for international migration as a whole. Only individuals belonging to agricultural households experiencing high exposure to the natural disaster increase their later likelihood to move abroad. Remittances turn out to be an efficient insurance tool to recover after natural shocks. Income flows from international migrants support household welfare preservation over the two years following the disaster, reducing the risk of being trapped into poverty.