We examine the impact of remittance receipt on children’s school attendance in the Dominican Republic. To isolate the effect of remittances from the effect of sometimes concurrent household migration, we focus on children in households without members currently residing abroad. The focus on this group is meaningful as 88 percent of children and as much as 52 percent of children in remittance-receiving households reside in those households. We find that remittances promote children’s school attendance regardless of the child’s gender and birth order. Additionally, we find that migration has a negative impact on the school attendance of children as it effectively eliminates the positive effect of remittance receipt when we expand our sample to include children in households with members currently residing abroad.

Keywords: Latin America, Dominican Republic, school attendance, remittances, migration