Browsing by Author "Embile, Hannah F."

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    Foreign remittances, employment decision, and household expenditure behavior the case of Filipino overseas contract workers’ spouses
    (2024-01-15) Embile, Hannah F.; Estanislao, Aila Marie B.; Pernia, Ernesto M.
    The Philippines is a primary recipient of foreign remittances, which a significant number of households rely on. This study examines how foreign remittances sent by Overseas Contract Workers (OCWs) affect the employment and household expenditure patterns of spouses left behind in the Philippines, as well as whether gender of the remittance-receiving spouse plays a crucial role in these decisions. Using the 2018 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and Labor Force Survey (LFS) merged data file, we employ logit and multinomial logit models to analyze employment decisions, as well as instrumental variable estimation to assess expenditure behavior across 12 consumption categories. Key results reveal that higher remittances lower employment in most employment categories for males and females. Remittance- receiving spouses, regardless of gender, spend more on education, housing, clothing, and furnishings, and less on food, tobacco, special occasions, transport, and durable goods. For health, alcohol, and special occasions, males and females had mixed results. Overseas remittances and the gender of the remittance-receiving spouses, thus, influence employment and household spending. Policy ideas promote human and physical capital investments for long-term wellbeing and economic growth of remittance-receiving households.