Migration and child growth in rural Guatemala Calogero Carletto a , Katia Covarrubias b , John A. Maluccio c,⇑ a The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA b Food and Agriculture Organization, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy c Middlebury College, Warner Hall, College Street, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA article info Article history: Available online 29 September 2010 Keywords: Migration Food security Child growth Stunting abstract This paper examines the relationship between migration and child growth in the rural highlands of Gua- temala, a region with substantial international migration outflows, significant remittance inflows, and some of the highest rates of child undernutrition in the world. Using cross-sectional survey data, a dou- ble-difference approach based on child growth patterns that controls for the selectivity of migration is used to assess the impact of migration to the US on Height-for-Age Z (HAZ) scores and stunting preva- lence of children. HAZ scores for children in households with a migrant to the US are conservatively esti- mated to be 0.5 standard deviations higher and the prevalence of stunting is approximately 6 percentage points lower. Descriptive evidence suggests the possible channels through which migration may operate are improved food security and reduced morbidity. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Guatemala has the highest prevalence of child undernutrition in Latin America. One in two children under the age of five is stunted, compared to the Central American regional average of 16%. Under- nutrition is particularly acute among the indigenous, who com- prise approximately half of the population and are concentrated in the Western Highlands. According to the 2008 school census, 63% of children 6–10 years old in the Western Highlands were stunted, compared to the national average of 46% (Ministerio de Educación and SESAN, 2008). Guatemala also is characterized by widespread poverty (World Bank, 2003, 2008) and here again the Western Highlands achieve notoriety. In 2006, 76% of the popula- tion in northwestern Guatemala was poor compared to the na- tional average of 51%. 1 Against this backdrop of widespread destitution, migration and remittances have become key economic and social factors in the livelihoods of many Guatemalan households. Driven by a surge in international migration, remittances have expanded dramatically in the last decade, and increasingly are viewed as an important component of regional economic development. In 2008 alone, Gua- temala received an estimated $4.5 billion in remittances, seven times the amount in 2000 (Ratha et al., 2009), from an estimated more than 1 million Guatemalans living in the United States (US). As a result, reported remittances to Guatemala amounted to approximately 10% of GDP and 60% of the country’s export revenue. At the household-level, these remittances are likely to have important income effects, as well as possibly relax binding liquid- ity, credit, or insurance constraints (Stark and Bloom, 1985). Several empirical studies have shown that the lion’s share of remittances to Latin America are spent by recipient households on consumption items (including food), durable goods, and investments in housing (IDB, 2007). In Central America, results from a recent survey suggest that 77% of remittances are spent on food and other basic daily needs. For Guatemala, this figure was 68% (Terry and Wilson, 2005). Other studies, including one on Guatemala using the 2000 ENCOVI, also find that substantial amounts of remittance income, at the margin, are channeled to other potentially beneficial uses such as education and income- generating investments (Adams, 2005a; Taylor and Mora, 2006). While ascertaining how remittance income is ultimately ‘‘spent” is plagued by difficult methodological issues, not the least of which is that they are fungible, the evidence provided by these analyses signals an important role for remittances in sustaining and improving consumption and living conditions within recipi- ent households (Adams, 2005b). Beyond these potential income effects from remittances, migra- tion also is likely to affect time and labor allocation in both produc- tive and reproductive activities, including home production and time spent in child care (Stark and Bloom, 1985). These latter ef- fects may be even more substantial if migrants are parents, espe- cially mothers, in the absence of alternative, equally effective 0306-9192/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.08.002 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 802 443 5941; fax: +1 802 443 2084. E-mail addresses: gcarletto@worldbank.org (C. Carletto), katia.covarrubias@ fao.org (K. Covarrubias), john.maluccio@middlebury.edu (J.A. Maluccio). 1 Authors’ calculations based on the 2006 Guatemalan Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida (ENCOVI), a nationally representative household living standards survey. Food Policy 36 (2011) 16–27 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol