MARKETING MONOGRAPH: Impact of Remmitance on Rural Poverty
(June, 2008)
Remittances in India’s case represent some 3% of GDP and as a result have significant economic and social impacts. IISS Dataworks proprietary data show that receipt by households of remittances has only a marginal impact on income inequality in rural India, as measured by Gini Coefficient, but significant impacts in terms of both the poverty gap and squared poverty indices. It establishes that that domestic remittances reduce the depth of poverty as well as the severity of poverty in rural India to a greater extent than international remittances because in the Indian context international migration is undertaken mainly by economically better off individuals where the incidence of poverty at the migrant household source is anyway lower.
