Leveraging remittances to households in Burundi: Implications in terms of consumption expenditures and assets acquisition
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UB, CURDES no 20
Abstract
In a context of a poor economy recovering from decades of civil conflicts, remittances to households as a supplementary income can be associated with significant welfare gains. Applying the propensity scores matching (PSM) with inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) estimation approach to the national wide dataset from
Integrated Survey on Households’ Living Conditions 2019/2020 (EICVMB 2019/2020), three hypotheses have been tested: the positive effects of remittances on food expenditures, on non-food expenditures, and on assets acquisition. Findings of this study revealed that remittances to households yield no positive effect on households’ food expenditures (ATE = -167), rather a positive effect on households’ assets acquisition as proxied by Asset Index (ATE = 0.5). These results suggest that remittances constitute a means for households to invest in assets rather than food consumption. These findings have implications for economic policy making in the perspective of leveraging remittances for sustainable households’ welfare improvements.