Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study investigates the relationship between spousal migration and the health-related knowledge and health-related decision-making of men and women left behind in Indonesia using the Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS 2012). There is, according to Lu (2012a), growing, albeit incomplete evidence that the processes of migration and health are interconnected in complex ways. This study makes a contribution to the academic literature that focuses on the consequences of migration (on health) from the perspective of the sending areas, in particular the migrant-sending household/family, with a focus on social remittances (instead of solely the economic impact, Adams and Page 2005). Based on the Social Remittances argument (Levitt 1998), the thesis gauges whether spouses residing within a migrant-sending household are more knowledgable about health (e.g. HIV/AIDS prevention) and whether it matters if the migrant is a man or a woman. These social remittances can have both a direct impact on the health of the left behinds but also moderate the effect of financial remittances, e.g. demands that remittances are used for certain expenses that are beneficial for health status such as piped water or medication. Since self-selection issues are prevalent in migration studies and can cast doubt on the positive association that may be found between migration and the outcome of interest (McKenzie and Sasin 2007), the paper creates a counterfactual framework using Propensity Score Matching techniques. Employing a two-stage analysis the paper investigates 1) If it matters for the outcomes of interest whether the person surveyed resides within a migrant-sending household or not, and 2) If it matters whether the migrant is male or female (assuming that women from Indonesia are temporarily migrating to different destinations and are working different jobs than their male counterpart and are thus being exposed to different knowledge about health). The study complements the nascent quantitative research on the nexus between migration and health in Indonesia (Kuhn et al. 2011; Lu 2008, 2012; Deb and Seck 2009). Furthermore, it adds to the literature by utilizing the DHS data sets for migration research (most health and migration-related studies on Indonesia have used the longitudinal data of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS)). Establishing new avenues of utilizing these nationally-representative and comprehensive data sets beyond their primary foci is a particularly valuable endeavor.