Flowing Wealth, Circulating Labor, and Reproduction in Central American Households

International migrants are subjected to numerous influences that may alter their fertility. The act of migration is disruptive to reproduction while exposure to different societal norms in addition to the transfer of remittance income can generate ideas and opportunities for household family planning. Contemporary data for three Central American countries (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua) surveyed by the Latin American Migration Project were analyzed to determine if migration length and remittance transfers had an influence on the instantaneous odds of a woman giving birth in given year. The analysis was structured to separate sociological influences on fertility attributable to migration from the income effects that accompany an increase in household wealth through remittance transfers. At the household level, the instantaneous odds that a birth would occur were negatively associated with an increase in cumulative U.S. remittance receipts. However, correlations between cumulative length of migration and household fertility outcomes were not found. A negative association between household income transfers and fertility may translate into significant economic, environmental and sociological benefits for communities that strive to reach development levels that exist in richer nations. Introduction Since the dawn of humanity, people have migrated varying distances and durations to improve their economic and social conditions. The intensity of these migrations—their distance and frequency—has increased exponentially over time, undoubtedly facilitated by rapid population growth and improvements in transportation and knowledge transfer technologies (Ravenstein 1889). A large body of literature discusses the impacts of in-migration on migrant-receiving communities (Borjas 1987, 2003; Borjas et al. 1996; Altionji and Card 1991; Card 2001, 2005; Card and DiNardo 2000). However, migrant-sending communities also experience significant changes due to the loss and often, eventual return, of migrants. Such changes include shifts in the local population structure, substantial losses of able-bodied laborers, and changes in levels of knowledge and income due to a constant circulation of migrants leaving and returning to their native communities (Bilsborrow et al. 1984, 1987, Jokisch 2002, Taylor et al. 2006). This study strives to describe one aspect of modern human migration—how fertility differs in developing countries among households who send migrants to more-developed countries for differing amounts of time and in return receive varying amounts of remittance income. To assess the influence of international migration and the infusion of money attributable to remittances on fertility, differences in birth hazards—the proportional odds that a woman will have a birth in a given life-year—are investigated for migrant-sending households who have and have not received remittance income. This paper shows, for the three countries studied (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua), that cumulative length of migration by the husband or the wife has no relationship to the odds that a birth will