Remesas, migración internacional y oportunidades educativas en los contextos de origen

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1 Remesas, migración internacional y oportunidades educativas en los contextos de origen Adam Sawyer, Bard College MAT, asawyer@bard.edu Síntesis Paralelo al crecimiento de la migración internacional, ha aumentado la atención que ésta recibe por parte de los medios de comunicación, en la política y en la investigación. La mayor parte de esta atención se ha centrado en el impacto económico y la integración de los migrantes en los países receptores. Es hasta recientemente que se ha prestado mayor atención a los efectos de la migración en las realidades económica, política y social de las sociedades en los lugares de origen. Esta investigación se centra en examinar la relación entre la migración internacional y las oportunidades educativas en una comunidad mexicana con altas tasas de emigración hacia Estados Unidos. Con ello se busca contribuir a la evaluación de las consecuencias de la migración en las comunidades de origen. El trabajo combina el uso de métodos cuantitativos y una encuesta realizada en San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca y en la comunidad receptora en el condado de San Diego en California. La investigación sobre este tema no ha sido concluyente en torno a si la emigración mejora o disminuye las oportunidades educativas, lo que ha resultado en el desarrollo de hipótesis opuestas al respecto. Esta investigación da nuevos elementos y ofrece una contribución original al explorar los efectos directos de las remesas y los mecanismos que median el impacto sobre la educación. Se analizan los cambios en el gasto en educación dentro del hogar, en la persistencia, en el logro y en las aspiraciones educativos en la comunidad de San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca. Introduction In the final decades of the 20 th century and into the first years of the new millennium, migration across national borders has emerged as a truly global phenomenon. It is now estimated that nearly 200 million people 3% of the world s population now live outside their country of origin while increasing number of nation-states in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania have transformed into both senders and receivers of international migrants (UNDP, 2006). As international migration has grown in prominence in recent decades, it has received increasing amounts of attention from media, politicians, and scholars. While much of this attention has focused on the economic impact and integration of migrants within receiving countries, the effect migration is having on the economic, political, and social realities of the societies migrants leave behind has also begun to be

2 2 noticed and studied by researchers and policy makers alike. While the first wave of this research exposed some of the negative consequences of migration for these communities such as human capital loss (brain drain), growing income inequality, family separations, and community breakdown (Bhaghati and Rodriguez, 1975; Kapur and McHale, 1995), recent studies have brought to light some of the potential benefits of migration for sending communities such as the increased social and financial capital harnessed through transnational communities, the enhanced human capital of return migrants, and the finely targeted development potential of remittances (Portés, 1995; Levitt, 2001). As empirical studies have begun to proliferate in this area, it is clear that out-migration carries both costs and benefits for the communities sojourners leave behind. This paper endeavors to contribute to the ongoing scholarly and policy level assessment of migration s consequences for the economic, political, and social lives of sending communities by examining the relationship of international migration to educational opportunity within one Mexican community with high rates of migration to the United States. Given the prominent role that education plays in shaping human capital formation, citizenship competencies, and in contributing to social equality, it is an appropriate domain in which to explore this relationship. In terms of my choice in field sites, given the long established and large scale patterns of migration between Mexico and the United States, Mexico provides a unique laboratory in which to explore the dynamics of international migration within sending communities (Cornelius and Bustamante, 1989; Cornelius, 1990). This paper utilizes quantitative methods to analyze survey data I helped to collect in the major migrant exporter of San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico (and its satellite receiving communities of San Diego County, California) 1, will build upon previous literature examining the relationship between 1 Access to this data has been provided to me by the University of California, San Diego s Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Project. I was hired by the Principal Investigators to design the education module of the study and was allowed to include survey and semi-structured interview questions relevant to my proposed dissertation study. Though data was collected in both the migrant sending and receiving community, data to be analyzed for my proposed thesis will draw almost exclusively from the sending community sample.

3 3 migration and a series of theoretically important educational outcomes for migrant sending communities. Prior research has provided conflicting evidence as to whether outmigration improves or diminishes educational opportunity leading to the development of a pair of competing hypotheses in this regard. Thus, my research will allow for further examination of these conflicting results, while also making the original contribution of exploring the direct effects of remittance income the yet to be tested mechanism scholars have hypothesized mediates sending community educational outcomes-- on a series of scholastic outcomes demonstrated or hypothesized to be impacted by out-migration. In analyzing the effects of remittance income, my dependent variables of interest will be sending-context household educational expenditures and a collection of measures of educational persistence, attainment, and aspirations in the migrant sending community of San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca. Migration and Educational Outcomes in Sending Communities: A Conceptual Overview As stated above, I will focus on the relationship between remittance income and a series of conceptually important educational outcomes in one Mexican migrant sending community. This in turn will allow for examination of the larger question as to whether out-migration improves educational opportunity in the communities migrants leave behind. Previous research in these areas, while not providing entirely clear answer to this question, does however endow a theoretical foundation for which I have drawn. In the paragraphs that follow, I will present a conceptual overview for my study covering the areas of remittances, educational spending, and schooling persistence; and the effects of a culture of migration upon school desertion. Remittances, Educational Spending, and Schooling Persistence Once considered inconsequential for the larger goals of international development, remittances have prominently arisen within the academic and political discourse on improving the economies and civil societies of the developing world. Recognized by economists and human rights advocates 2 alike for 2 It bears mentioning that within academic and advocate circles, remittances are a contested topic. Critics charge that remittances can serve to exacerbate existing social inequalities in migrant sending communities and do not justify the family and community breakdown wrought by large scale migration.

4 4 their finely targeted nature that allows this income to mostly land in their intended hands and for their desired locally sensitive purposes, great strides have been made in measuring the impact of this migrant generated and internationally transferred financial capital. In the case of Mexico, remittances represent a significant portion of the nation s total foreign exchange. In the year 2007, data from Mexico s Federal Reserve showed that remittances from Mexicans working in the United States reached 24 billion U.S. dollars and is predicted to reach 24.7 by the end of 2008, representing nearly 3% of the nation s Gross Domestic Product (Banamex, 2008). Similar to other developing nations around the world, one of the great impediments facing the pursuit of schooling for the economically marginalized citizens of Mexico s rural areas are the high direct costs involved in paying for schooling, especially within the more advanced education cycles (Reimers, 2002; Bracho, 2002; Santibañez, 2005). In Mexico, while 93% of students attend elementary school, a smaller 86% attend secondary education (with only a bit more than half finishing this school cycle), and only 51% of the relevant age cohort attend high school (Santibañez, 2005). It has thus been hypothesized that for Mexico s economically marginalized and mostly rural migrant sending communities, remittance income can serve as the financial boost needed to meet educational expenses, reduce opportunity costs of forgone child labor, and thus increase schooling enrollment and attainment (Hanson, 2002; Kandell and Kao, 2001). No empirical study has directly examined whether families who receive remittances devote those to the education of school-aged children in the household. Examining this relationship and its implications for educational participation, attainment, and aspirations is the purpose of this paper. Within our exploratory survey and qualitative research in San Miguel Tlacotepec, we found that 33 percent of remittance-receiving households designate such income for education remittances. We also heard numerous testimonials from educators, parents, and students of how remittance income supported the pursuit of education (Cornelius and Sawyer, 2008). There is indirect evidence that supports a relationship between remittance income and educational outcomes. In a 2002 study of Mexican census data, Hanson found that on a national level, youths from migrant households (those having one member living abroad) had accumulated more years of schooling

5 5 on average than those from non-migrant households when controlling for contextual and demographic factors. Similarly, Kandell and Kao (2001) found, based upon a survey of 7600 Mexican school children from the prominent migrant sending state of Zacatecas, that students from migrant families had higher school performance as measured by grades than those from non-migrant families. It is important to note, however, that the authors found that these same children had lower aspirations of attending college than those from non-migrant families leading the authors to conclude that the financial benefits from international migration allow students to perform well and potentially attain greater amounts of schooling, while being from a migrant household also paradoxically provides a disincentive for pursuing higher levels of education (Kandell and Kao, 2001). While these studies establish the existence of a relationship between out-migration and educational outcomes, they do not provide evidence on the mechanism underlying this relationship. I will investigate directly the effects of remittance income on household educational spending and a series of other important educational outcomes. The Culture of Migration and School Desertion Advancing empirically grounded understandings of the mechanisms through which migration relates to educational outcome makes it necessary to make sense of what are currently competing views on the effects of migration on educational opportunity. In contrast to the positive associations found by some researchers of the relationship between migration and schooling outcomes, other researchers have uncovered negative associations between migration and educational aspirations (Kandell and Kao, 2001). Other scholars have speculated additional potentially negative consequences for schooling in migrant sending communities. The culture of migration refers to the community norm that emerges in Mexican communities long engaged in international migration by which leaving to work or reunite with family members in the United States becomes an expected part of the life-cycle, especially for young men (Cornelius, 1990).

6 6 Given these community norms, the fact that Mexican educational credentials are of little use for securing the mostly unskilled work available to Mexican migrants in the United States, and that migration is facilitated by having existing networks in the receiving community, some scholars and observers have hypothesized that youths from prominent migrant sending communities and especially those with existing migrant kinship networks might be more likely to desert school prematurely (Kandell and Kao, 2001; Miranda, 2007; McKenzie and Rapoport, 2006). Empirical support for this hypothesis has come from a handful of different studies. Kandell and Massey (2002), in a survey of 7,000 school-aged children and youth in Zacatecas found that the higher the respondent s family s involvement in migration, the higher their intent was to someday migrate themselves which in turn was associated with a diminished aspiration to pursue additional schooling. Similarly, McKenzie and Rappaport (2006), using the nationally representative Mexican Family Life Survey (MXLFS) found that living in a migrant household lowered the chances of boys completing junior high by 22% and boys and girls completing high school by 13-15%. In another recent study, Miranda (2007), using data from the Mexican Migration Project, found that possessing migrant family networks was associated with a decreased probability of having completed high school within Mexican migrant sending communities. Research Questions As I have shown in the preceding literature review, empirical studies using disparate datasets and methods have yielded conflicting results as to relationship between migration and educational outcomes. Alas, there appears to be some support for each of the seemingly contradictory hypotheses as to the sign of this association. For this reason, I will aim through my research questions to contribute to current debates in this area by testing both of the main hypotheses currently held on the topic (the first that remittances increase educational opportunity and the second that it diminishes it). In doing so, I will take advantage of the unique features of my data to directly test for the effects of remittances the

7 7 hypothesized mechanism behind migration s effects on educational outcomes-- on family expenditures in education and a series of educational outcomes. In this paper, I propose to address a first research question pertaining to the population of youths aged living in the major Mexican migrant sending community of San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca. The focus of is important for several reasons. Compulsory education in Mexico covers the ages of 4 to 15. The age group is thus an appropriate one at which to assess: a) whether these students completed the expected nine grades of education established in the Mexican constitution and, for who have not; b) whether these youth are still in school. In addition, the most serious equity divides in education take place at the upper secondary level and in college access, it is thus appropriate to establish whether migration relates to the aspirations and persistence in school at these post-compulsory levels. That said, for the population of youths aged 15-19, I will investigate the following: Do youths aged from families receiving international remittance income (when controlling for relevant contextual and demographic variables) have higher educational attainment, school participation, and educational aspirations than those from families without such financial resources? I also propose for this paper a second group of research questions for the population of household heads with children in San Miguel Tlacotepec. Focusing on parents will allow for studying the relationship between remittance income and household educational expenditures as well as the effects that remittances and household educational expenditures have on the aspirations parents have for their children s education and their eventual educational attainment. Thus, for the population of household heads in San Miguel Tlacotepec I will explore the following research questions: Do household heads who receive remittance income (when controlling for relevant contextual and demographic variables) spend more on the educational expenses of their children than those without such financial resources? Do such households have

8 8 higher aspirations for the education of their children? Do these household heads have children with higher average educational attainment than those not receiving remittances? Research Design and Methodology Site Selection It is currently estimated that 400,000 Mexicans migrate annually to the United States for either permanent or temporary settlement and that 9.2 million Mexican-born people presently reside in the United States (Pew Hispanic Center, 2007). In terms of sheer numbers, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca is a relatively minor exporter of migrants to the United States. In 2000, it ranked 16 th out of Mexico s 32 states in terms of the percentage it comprises of overall Mexican migration to the United States (Cohen, 2004). Nevertheless, the flow of Oaxacan migrants has been growing rapidly since the 1980s and it exploded in the 1990s. By the year % of Oaxacan households had at least one migrant living across the border (Cohen, 2004). Oaxaca s great cultural diversity also reflects an emerging indigenous representation in overall Mexican migration (Cornelius, Fitgerald & Lewin-Fischer, forthcoming). It is estimated that one million indigenous Mixtec, Zapotec, and Triqui Oaxacans currently live in the United States (Holmes, 2006). Located in Oaxaca s impoverished Mixtec highlands, San Miguel Tlacotepec is classified by the Mexican government as a high percentile emigrant community (SIMO, 2008). Now its second generation of international migration, the town of 1,696 people lost 353 members of its population due to emigration between , and a further 712 between 2000 and 2004 (SIMO, 2008). It is increasingly a town of old men, women, and young children as most men between the ages of 20 and 50 are working in the United States. Within the United States, Tlacotepenses have settled predominately in the North San Diego County cities of Vista, Oceanside, and Escondido with an estimated families alone living in Vista. Reflecting a trend found throughout Oaxaca and many other states of the Mexican republic,

9 9 migrants from San Miguel Tlacotepec maintain close ties to family members back home through regular communication and the sending of remittances. Our survey found that 72% of San Miguel migrants living in the United States send remittances back home; nearly 50% of the town s residents receive remittance income from the United States; and recipients rank educational expenses as the second most common use of remittance income behind basic expenses (Cornelius and Sawyer, 2008). Data Collection Data for my study was collected as part of a binational ethno-survey designed carried out by the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Project (MMFRP), a partnership between the University of California, San Diego s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociológicas at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca. Part of a binational team of 30 researchers, I spent two weeks in San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca in December 2007 where I participated in the administration of a 158 item survey to all residents aged 15 to 65 in the community. I designed the education module of the survey with authorization to include in this module the questions of most direct relevance to my study. The education related items on the questionnaire inquired into years of completed schooling; own and parental educational aspirations; reasons for school desertion; parental education levels; and perceptions of school quality (See Appendix). In all, 636 surveys were completed in San Miguel Tlacotepec and an additional 184 were administered to Tlacotepense migrants living in Vista, California and its environs in January and February for an overall sample of 820. We subsequently entered survey data into a central database where it was cleaned and coded for use with both the SPSS and STATA statistical software packages. In addition to the closed response surveys, our research team gathered qualitative data in both San Miguel Tlacotepec and San Diego County. In the area of education, we conducted semi-structured interviews with school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Within San Miguel Tlacotepec, all respondents were asked to describe their perceptions of migration s impact on schooling in the

10 10 community; teachers and administrators were specifically asked for vignettes about particular students impacted in one way or another by migration; parents were asked to describe aspirations for their children, and how decisions about allocation of resources for education were made; and students were prompted to describe the role of schooling in their lives, their perception of the educational opportunities available to them, their intentions regarding international migration, and their aspirations for future attainment. In addition to these interviews, we conducted participant observation within all five of San Miguel Tlacotepec s schools as well as those attended by Tlacotepenses in San Diego County in the United States. This information has been helpful in developing working hypotheses, conceptual models, and in interpreting preliminary survey results for this proposed study. Data Analysis Research Question #1: Educational Attainment, Participation, and Aspirations of Tlacotepense s Youth For the first research question, I will explore the relationship between remittance income and the outcomes educational attainment, aspirations, and school participation for a census of youth aged 15 to 19 San Miguel Tlacotepec. This will allow me to test both the competing hypotheses in the research literature (that of migration boosting educational opportunity versus that of migration suppressing educational outcomes) as well as the association of the suspected underlying mechanism of remittances has with important educational outcomes for this sensitive age group in Mexican society. I will use logistic regression to estimate probabilities for the outcome school participation (which will be constructed as a dichotomous variable) and OLS regression to estimate parameters for the outcomes educational attainment and educational aspirations (which will be constructed as continuous variables). I will now describe the sample, measures, and hypothesized regression models I will use to address this first research question. Sample

11 11 The full MMFRP sample of San Miguel Tlacotepec based year olds contains 680 respondents from which I will draw a sub-sample of 138 (89 females and 71 males) youths aged Measures Outcomes School Participation: Using survey question #4, I will create the dichotomous variable INSCHOOL (0=not in school, 1=in School) to indicate whether the youth is still in school. Educational Attainment Using survey question #71, I will create the continuous variable ATTAIN to indicate the number of years of schooling youth has completed. Educational Aspirations: Using survey question #73, I will create the continuous variable ASPIRE to indicate the number of years of schooling that youth hopes to complete. Question Predictor Reception of Remittances: I will create the dummy variable REMIT (0=not receiving remittances, 1=receiving remittances) to indicate whether youth s household receives remittance income. Control Variables

12 12 Contextual Characteristics: Sixty percent of households in San Miguel Tlacotepec participate in the Mexican compensatory program Oportunidades which incentivizes school attendance by distributing cash transfers to mothers based upon the school attendance and grades of their children. As the program has been empirically shown to increase school enrollment and reduce instances of youth migration, participation in the program is an important covariate for which I need to control. For this reason, I will use survey item #84 to create the dummy variable OPORTUN (0=not in Oportunidades, 1=in Oportunidades) to indicate whether the youth s family participates in Oportunidades. Demographic Characteristics: Gender: In previous studies, the effects of migration on educational outcomes have varied sometimes greatly--as a function of gender (see Kandel and Kao, 2001; McKenzie and Rapoport, 2006). Thus, it is a background characteristic for which I need to control and be aware of possible interactions. I will use survey item #163 to create the dummy variable FEMALE (0=male, 2=female) Other Covariates: As is common in these types of analyses, I will include control predictors describing the youth s family size, household wealth (an index based upon household possession), and parents education level (highest grade level passed). Hypothesized Regression Model I will use logistic regression analysis (for categorical outcome INSCHOOL) and OLS regression analysis (for continuous outcomes ATTAIN and ASPIRE) to investigate the relationship between youth school participation, attainment, aspirations and their family s reception of remittances. In what follows, I describe my proposed analyses for a generic outcome, Y, that stands in place of the three outcomes, focusing on the hypothesized structure of the right-hand side of the statistical models, containing the

13 13 predictors. I will conduct similar analyses for each outcome, with the method of analysis (logit, OLS) conforming to the distributional properties of the outcome. A typical hypothesized regression model would have the following form 3 : Y i =β 0 + β 1 REMIT i + β 2 OPORTUN i + β 3 FEMALE + β 4 X i + ε i Where X represents a vector of selected youth characteristics serving as control predictors, ε is a residual and: β 0 = intercept, β 1 = main effect of reception of remittance income in youth s household β 2 = main effect of youth s family involvement in Oportunidades β 3=main effect of gender β 4= main effect of selected controls In this model, parameters β 1 is of principal interest. If the estimate is positive and statistically significant for the outcome INSCHOOL, I will thus infer that within the population of youths aged 15 to 19 in the major migrant sending community of San Miguel Tlacotepec, Mexico, those in households that receive remittances are more likely to still be in school. For the outcome ATTAIN, a similar output for the parameters β 1 and would lead to the inference that youths in the population with family remittance income have higher educational attainment on average than those in families without this income. Finally, for the outcome ASPIRE, positive and statistically significant results for the parameter β 1 would lead me to infer that youths with families that receive remittances have higher schooling aspirations on average than those without this income. Research Question #2: Educational Spending, Parent Aspirations, and Children s Educational Attainment of San Miguel Tlacotepec s Household Heads 3 Given the great number of multi-child households in San Miguel, I closely inspected this data to check for the clustering of youths in families. This review informed that there is only minimal clustering of year olds within households, so I will assume that individuals in this sample behave independently of one another. The very moderate clustering that exists will be ignored for the sake of this present analysis.

14 14 For the second group of research questions, I will explore the relationship between remittance income and the outcomes of household educational expenditures, parent schooling aspirations, and childrens educational attainment for a census of Tlacotepec household heads with children. This will allow me to directly test the hypothesized relationship (speculated upon in previous literature) between remittance income and household educational expenditures as well as further test the competing hypotheses in the research literature (that of migration boosting educational opportunity versus that of migration suppressing educational outcomes). I will use OLS regression to estimate parameters for the outcome household education spending (which will be constructed as a continuous variable), logistic regression to estimate probabilities for the outcome parent aspirations for children s educations (which will be constructed as an ordinal variable) and multi-level 4 OLS regression to estimate parameters for the outcome chidrens educational attainment (which will be constructed as a continuous variable within a nested model). I will now describe the sample, measures, and hypothesized regression models I will use to address the second group of research questions. Sample In essence, two separate samples will be used to address the second group of research questions. For the outcomes household education spending and parent aspirations for childrens education, I will use a sub-sample from the MMFRP data of household heads with school agedchildren (ages 4-18) totaling 402 household heads. To explore the educational attainment of children nested within households, I will create a separate panel dataset of 1,752 children within these households and draw inferences from a sub-sample of children aged N= Multi-level regression will be run to control for clustering of children within households.

15 15 Measures Outcomes Educational Expenditures Using survey question #81, I will create the continuous variable EDUCMONEY to indicate the amount of spending for education-related expenses household heads report (in US dollars per month). Parent Aspirations for Children s Education Using survey question #80, I will create the ordinal variable PARENTASPIRE to indicate head of households aspirations for their children s education (1=finish elementary school, 2=finish lower secondary school, 3=finish high school, 4= finish college, 5= Graduate Degree). Children s Educational Attainment Using survey question #13, I will create the continuous variable SCHOOLMEX to indicate the total years of Mexico-based schooling that household head s children have completed. Question Predictor Remittance Income 5 : I will create the continuous variable REMITINCOME to indicate the amount (US dollars per month) that households receive in remittance income. Control Variables Contextual Characteristics: 5 Within the sample of youths previously discussed, the dichotomous variable REMIT was used to denote the presence of remittance income in the youths household. In these cases, the actual amount of remittance income was unknown; However, this information was reported for household heads, which makes it possible to include a continuous remittance variable in these models, thus allowing for an examination of how the outcome variables of interest vary as a function of actual remittance income.

16 16 As previously described (see Research Question #1 Data Analysis) it is important within the local San Miguel Tlacotepec context to control for participation in the Mexican compensatory program Oportunidades. Hence, once more I will use survey item #84 to create the dummy variable OPORTUN (0=not in Oportunidades, 1=in Oportunidades) to indicate whether the household participates in Oportunidades. (For outcome SCHOOLMEX only): As shown in the existing research literature (see Kandel and Kao, 2001; Kandell and Massey, 2002), a major hypothesized cause of school desertion for youths in Mexican migrant sending communities is participation in international migration. Thus, when examining the educational attainment of children nested within households, we will control for whether the child has already emigrated by using survey question #13 to create the dummy variable EMIGR (0=has not emigrated, 1=has emigrated). Demographic Characteristics: Once again, as is common in these types of analyses, I will include control predictors describing the household head s gender, household size, household wealth (an index based upon household possession), and head of household education level (highest grade level passed). For children nested within these households, I will control for the child s gender, birth order, age, household size, household wealth, and parents education level. Hypothesized Regression Model I will use OLS regression analysis (for continuous outcome, EDUCMONEY) and logistic regression analysis (for categorical outcome PARENTASPIRE) to investigate the relationship between head of household educational spending, aspirations for their children s education and their monthly household income that comes by way of remittance income. In what follows, I describe my proposed analyses for the outcomes EDUCMONEY and PARENTASPIRE focusing on the hypothesized structure

17 17 of the right-hand side of the statistical models, containing the predictors. A typical hypothesized regression model for this continuous outcome would have the following form: Y i =β 0 + β 1 REMITINCOME i + β 2 OPORTUNi i + β 3 X i + ε i Where X represents a vector of selected characteristics serving as control predictors, ε is a residual and: β 0 = intercept, β 1 = main effect of reception of remittance income in respondent s household β 2= main effect of family involvement in Oportunidades β 3= main effect of selected controls In this model, parameter β 1 is of principal interest. If the estimate is positive and statistically significant for the outcome EDUCMONEY, I will thus infer that within the population of household heads with school aged children in the major migrant sending community of San Miguel Tlacotepec, Mexico, household heads who receive remittances spend more money on average for educational expenses than those not in such households. Similarly, for the outcome PARENTASPIRE, a positive and statistically significant estimation of this parameter would lead me to infer that head of households who receive remittance income are more probable to have higher aspirations for their children s schooling than those without such income. For the outcome TOTALSCHOOL (here represented as hypothesized outcome Y), typical hypothesized regression models would appear in the following form: Y i =β 0 + β 1 REMITINCOME i + β 2 OPORTUN i + β 3 EMIGR i + β 4 FEMALE + β 5 X i ε i Where X represents a vector of selected characteristics serving as control predictors, ε is a residual and: β 0 = intercept, β 1 = main effect of reception of remittance income in respondent s household β 2= main effect of family involvement in Oportunidades β 3= main effect of child s participation in international migration β 4=main effect of gender β 5= main effect of selected controls

18 18 For this model, if parameter estimate β 1 is positive and statistically significant for the outcome STUDYMEX, I will infer that children from households that receive remittance income complete more years of schooling on average than those not in such households. Limitations As survey data was collected in only one Mexican sending community and its main U.S. satellite receiving community, results can only be generalized to this community and not to the national population of Mexican migrant sending communities. Similarly, as individuals and households with access to remittance income can only be compared those without access to such financial capital within a community --which is overall highly impacted by international migration-- my analyses can support only descriptive, not causal conclusions. Furthermore, as this data reflects a snapshot of the phenomena in question at one point in time, my analysis can only support cross-sectional and not longitudinal conclusions. Conclusion This proposed paper endeavors to make an original contribution to a growing body of scholarly work examining the relationship between out-migration and educational opportunity in migrant sending communities. This empirical assessment ultimately enters into the larger debate as to whether international migration has a positive or negative impact on the economic, civic, and social development of the communities and countries from which migrants depart. While this paper has some previously stated limitations in terms of the conclusions that can be drawn from it, it also possesses numerous strengths. For one, it will provide the first (to my knowledge) exploration of the direct effects of remittances on a range of theoretically educational outcomes including the actual educational expenditures of remittance receiving households a step not taken before in these types of studies. It will also offer exploration of the

19 19 effects of migration on a wide range of dependent schooling variables which have been explored in isolation in several different papers, but rarely together in the same investigation. Hence, my interpretation of the sign and strength of association amongst the variables I have specified will be useful in refining present hypotheses and generating new ones to guide future work in other Mexican migrant sending communities, as well as the design of nationally representative and experimental studies. Ultimately such work must be undertaken if researchers and policymakers are to work together with the world s citizens to devise solutions and if necessary, alternatives to the impact felt by the ever increasing phenomenon of international migration. References Banamex, Review of the Economic Situation of Mexico, Vol. LXXXIV, February 2008, pp. 25, 27 Bhagati, J. and Rodriguez, C. (1975). Welfare-theoretical analysis of the brain drain. MIT Working Papers, 158. Bracho, T. (2000). Poverty and Education in Mexico. In Unequal Schools, Unequal Chances. Fernando Reimers, ed. Pp Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Cohen, J. (2004). The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Cornelius, W. C. and Bustamante, J., (1989). Mexican Migration to the United States: Origins, Consequences, and Policy Options. San Diego, CA: Center for US-Mexico Studies, University of California, San Diego Cornelius, W. (1990) Labor Migration to the United States: Development Outcomes and Alternatives in Mexican Sending Communities, Working Paper No. 38, U.S. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, Washington, D.C., May California.

20 20 Cornelius W. and Sawyer A., (2008, March) Does Migration Impact Educational Mobility?: Evidence from a Oaxacan Sending Community and its U.S. Satellites. Paper presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Association, New York, NY. Hanson, Gordon Emigration and Educational Attainment in Mexico. UCSD Working Paper. Holmes, S. (2006) An Ethnographic Study of the Social Context of Migrant Health in the United States. PloS Medicine, (3)10 (pp ). Kandel, W. and Kao, G. The impact of temporary labor migration on Mexican children s educational aspirations and performance. International Migration Review 35 (4) Kandel, William, and Douglas S. Massey "The Culture of Mexican Migration: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis." Social Forces 80: Kapur, D. and McHale, J. (2005) Give us Your Best and Brightest. Washington, DC: Ch. 2, pp Levitt, Peggy The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press. McKenzie, D. and Rapoport, H. (2006) Can migration reduce educational attainment? Evidence from Mexico. Washington, DC: World Bank Working Papers. Portés, A. (1996a). Global Villagers: The rise of transnational communities. The American Prospect, 25, (pp ). Reimers, F. (2002) Unequal Schools, Unequal Chances. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Santibañez, L., Vernez, G., and Razquin, P. (2005) Education in Mexico: Challenges and Opportunities. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2006), International Migration, 2006 (Wall Chart). New York.