Remittances and Inequality: A Question of Migration Stage and Geographic Scale*

Abstract

Abstract: Over the past decade, the benefits from economic globalization have bypassed most developing countries, and as a result international wage‐labor migration has taken on new importance. The impact of remittances on migrant origins is still, however, a subject of considerable debate. Some researchers find that remittances tend to increase income inequalities, whereas others find just the opposite—even, upon occasion, when they are writing about the same place. This study offers a spatiotemporal perspective in which the stage of migration and the spatial scale at which inequalities are measured are conceptualized as controls that help explain these divergent views. I describe a case study, based on 1988 household survey data collected in central Zacatecas state, Mexico. Interfamilial inequalities are found first to decrease and then to increase as a place's migration experience deepens. Throughout this experience, however, rural incomes improve relative to urban ones, since remittances are targeted to the predominantly rural areas of origin.