Remittances and Household Socio-Economic Well-Being

One of the key outcomes of international migration is the flow of resources to the home countries of migrants. With the rise of international migration from Ethiopia, remittance flows have recently become significant in terms of total volume and their impact on household income and the national economy. In recent years, the amount of remittances to Ethiopia has increased and as such outperformed the export sector. This chapter by using empirical data collected from selected sites examined two major questions with respect to the flow of remittances from Ethiopian migrants in the Gulf countries and South Africa. The first is why migrants choose informal channels of remittance transfer over the formal ones and the second is the socio-economic impacts of remittances at the household level in migrant communities.