With about one billion international and internal migrants worldwide, the relationship between migration and the family left behind is an important policy question. Labor migration is conventionally viewed as economically benefiting the family left behind. Remittance transfers can ease budget constraints and thereby increase spending on health care and education, improving households’ long-term welfare in the source country. However, the migrant’s absence might also have negative consequences for non-migrants, be they children, the elderly, or a spouse.

Policymakers need to account for differences in the situations of migrants and their families who stay behind and bolster support systems in education and health care to help families cope with the detrimental effects of migration on the accumulation of human capital. If migration implies lower education or health status or more child labor, the potentially long-term costs of migration need to be mitigated through appropriate home country policies. Population aging is another issue to consider.

Watch our new video on the gender pay gap:

Read IZA World of Labor articles relating to the discussion:

• Equal pay legislation and the gender wage gap (Deutsch) (Español) by Solomon W. Polachek

Consult our key topic pages to find relevant articles,
opinion pieces and videos on topics such as
education and labor policy, apprenticeships and training and higher education and human capital
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Latest articles

• Income inequality and social origin (Deutsch) by Lorenzo Cappellari

• The impact of legalizing unauthorized immigrants (Deutsch) by Cynthia Bansak and Sarah Pearlman

• Immigrants in the classroom and effects on native children (Deutsch) by Peter Jensen

• Inequality and informality in transition and emerging countries (Deutsch) by Roberto Dell’Anno

• Low-wage employment (Deutsch) by Claus Schnabel

• Disability and labor market outcomes (Deutsch) (Español) by Melanie Jones

• The value of language skills (Deutsch) (Español) by Gilles Grenier and Weiguo Zhang

• Do labor costs affect companies’ demand for labor? (Deutsch) (Español) by Daniel S. Hamermesh

• Statistical profiling of unemployed jobseekers (Deutsch) (Español) by Bert van Landeghem, Sam Desiere and Ludo Struyven

• Correspondence testing studies (Deutsch) (Español) by Dan-Olof Rooth

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Upcoming events:

• 4th IZA/Higher School of Economics Workshop: Thirty Years after the Fall of the Iron Curtain: The Contribution of Labor Market Adjustment to Transition and Convergence, June 30 2021 - Online 

• First IZA Workshop: Climate Change and Labor Markets, July 05 2021 - Online

• 20th IZA/SOLE Transatlantic Meeting of Labor Economists (TAM), July 08-09 2021 - Online 

• IZA Workshop: Labor Market Institutions, September 03-04 2021 - Online 

• World Employment Conference 2020: Steering a labour market in transformation, September 07-08 2021 - Madrid, Spain 

• 33rd Annual Conference of the European Association of Labour Economists, September 16-18 2021 - Padua, Italy 

• 4th IDSC of IZA Workshop: Matching Workers and Jobs Online - New Developments and Opportunities for Social Science and Practice, October 08 2021 - Online

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