Remittances, Consumption and Housing

Detailed chapter description

Chapter 120 examined migration as a labour-market system. This chapter turns to what happens after earnings move back toward the household. Remittances are neither a single-purpose transfer nor a transparent measure of prosperity. A payment received from Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra, the Gulf or another destination may be used in the same month for grain, school fees, medicine, a loan instalment and bricks. The analytical task is therefore to reconstruct allocation over time rather than force every rupee into a rigid consumption-versus-investment category. The evidence for Mithila, Vajji and Anga is uneven. Longitudinal research in rural Bihar repeatedly found remittances central to migrant-household budgets, with food consumption, debt clearance, health and education preceding or accompanying asset creation. The Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023–24 provides a much newer Bihar consumption baseline—average monthly per-capita consumption expenditure of Rs 3,670 in rural Bihar and Rs 5,080 in urban Bihar—but it is not a remittance-use survey and should not be read as one. On the Nepal side, the Nepal Living Standards Survey IV 2022/23 provides a stronger direct remittance benchmark: 79.1 per cent of Madhesh households received remittances, while national tabulations show daily consumption as the dominant reported use. These figures are dated survey results, not permanent characteristics. Housing deserves separate treatment because it is simultaneously shelter, durable asset, social signal, collateral-like wealth and a source of local demand. Migration-financed construction can improve safety and amenities, but it can also lock cash into a low-liquidity asset, intensify land-price competition or produce large houses with few working-age residents. The chapter therefore examines consumption smoothing, debt, education, health, savings, durables, ceremonies, land and housing as parts of one household portfolio, then asks how those choices affect inequality and the local economy.