Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2018
This paper studies the distribution of resources within families with migrant member abroad. We derive a complete collective demand system with individual Engel effects for male and female adults and children, and the respective share of resources. The focus is on migrant-sending families in Albania, where gender and inter-generational inequalities are relevant social issues. The results show that the female share of resources is substantially lower with respect to an equal distribution and do not benefit from father’s migration. Children have a larger share of resources and benefit from their fathers migration, when women maintain control over family decisions and when the proportion of female children is larger (at the detriment of women).
We are grateful for useful comments and suggestions received from two anonymous reviewers, Orazio Attanasio, Arnab K. Basu, Eliane El Badaoui, Jean-Paul Chavas, Gianna Claudia Giannelli, Costas Meghir, Martina Menon, Agnes Quisumbing, Michèle Tertilt, and Marcella Veronesi. We would also like to thank participants in The Alpine Population Conference 2016 in Villars-sur-Ollon, the UNU-WIDER “Gender and Development: Workshop” in Namur, in the workshop “Advances in Family Economics and Applications to Developing Countries” in Paris, in the “Inequalities in Children’s Outcomes in Developing Countries” Conference in Oxford, in the “Conference on the Economics of the Family in honor of Gary Becker” in Paris, in the “Conference in memoriam of Etta Chiuri” in Bari, in the “Forth meeting of the ECINEQ society” in Catania, in the 38th Symposium of the Spanish Economic Association in Santander and in a seminar at ISER (University of Essex). This work has benefited from funding of the Spanish Ministry of Economics (grant number ECO2015-63727-R).