 |
This paper adapts an OLG model framework in order to capture the economic and demographic effects of migration in countries such as the Caribbean islands. We describe household decision-making on education spending, consumption and savings where the elderly receives remittances and domestic transfers from the active generation. In a given economy, the model predicts that migration boosts education spending at the expense of physical capital accumulation. Furthermore, numerical simulations of the model predict that households in Jamaica, Haiti and Dominican Republic invest more in education and exhibit higher fertility rates. As a result, their economic growth is labor-driven. By contrast, Trinidad and Tobago as well as Barbados generate their economic growth through physical capital accumulation. This is due to the fact that benefits from human capital accumulation are lower in Barbados because of a low migration premium, while remittances in Trinidad are too low to trigger additional education expenditure.
