The effects of remittances on education in a post-conflict society: evidence from Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract

This paper analyses the effects of remittances on the educational enrolment of children in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where a process of forced migration made the relocation decision exogenous. Accordingly, this study has no need of methods to address the endogeneity of remittances. Hence, the approach taken means that the measure of educational enrolment is regressed on a set of individual- and household-level variables. In addition, a new approach to estimation is introduced, whereby the effect of remittances is calculated for each income quintile. It is found that the relationship between remittances and educational enrolment is strong among households from the fourth quintile, which includes households just outside the risk of poverty, while for those in poorer quintiles the effect is not significant.