Ghana - Income and Remittances

Abstract

Within the past few decades, the role of migration in influencing development has garnered very interesting public debate at the local, national, regional and international level. This has been particularly apparent in Ghana due to the timely and significant nature of remittances in the socio-economic development of the country. In recent times, attention has focused on remittances as a potential source of development finance given changes in the level and composition of official development assistance received by Ghana as it graduates to lower middle-income status. While migration is a common strategy adopted by individuals and households to move out of poverty and improve living standards, the actual welfare impacts of this phenomenon have been a source of debate within the policy environment, governments, and among researchers. The movement of people has been implicitly assumed to have positive impacts on living standards, in that potential migrants are described as weighing up the costs and benefits of migration, measured by expected costs and earnings, and the migration decision is only triggered if the expected benefits outweigh the costs, where these costs and benefits are not restricted to financial forms. Our study will examine both economic and social outcomes of migration on both the migrant and the entire household.