Predictors of investment expenditure from foreign remittances in the sylhet region of Bangladesh: A household-level analysis

Remittances, the most explicit outcome of international migration, play a vital role in the socioeconomic development of Bangladesh. The optimum allocation of these scarce resources is of utmost importance for intergenerational consumption smoothing. This study explores the household-level factors of spending remittances in different investment sectors. The study uses a primary dataset from a field survey covering 500 migrant and 250 non-migrant households from 30 clusters of the Sylhet region of Bangladesh. Results indicate that total household income, ownership of residence, asset score, operative land, household size and economic dependency ratio are the significant determinants for investment in an absolute sense. The models for identifying the predictors in different investment sectors suggest that household income, ownership of residence, asset score, education of the household head and household size are common determinants for all the sectors. Substantial investments in different sectors may be determined by several predictors, such as household income, ownership of residence, asset score, education of household head and household size.