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However, other scholars documented that even the disposition of remittances on
consumption and real estate may produce various indirect growth effects on the economy.
These include the release of other resources to investment and the generation of multiplier
effects. Regarding the use of migrant remittances, a longstanding literature has suggested
that remittances are more often spent on basic consumption needs, health care and real
estate. But, whether from remittances or other sources, income is spent in a way which
responds to the hierarchy of needs. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that until the
developing countries reach a certain level of welfare, households will continue to exhibit
the same spending pattern (Lowell and de la Garza, 2000).

Ncube et al, 2013 documented recent trends in remittance flows to Africa, their key
macroeconomic properties such as relatively low pro-cyclicality and volatility, and some
of the determinants in receiving countries, namely growth and stable macroeconomic
environment. In like manner, Quartey (2006) concluded that migrant remittances improve
household welfare and the flow of such remittances increases in times of economic shocks,
hence they are counter-cyclical. Thus the remittances help to minimize economic shocks
that reduce household welfare, particular for food crop farmers.

Adenutsi, 2009 also tested the central hypothesis and concluded that international migrant
remittance inflows do not influence the overall human development within the SSA sub-
region, the paper used the fixed-effects model to analyse balanced panel annual data on 18
SSA countries for the period, 1987 to 2007. The conclusion of this paper validates the
prediction of the remittance-optimistic school that, as far as the overall human
development is concerned, in the long run, international migration can be beneficial to
low-income countries through increased international migrant remittance inflows.

Ratha, 2013 asserted that there are positive spillover effects, with some of the expenditures
and investments made by remittance-receiving households accruing to entire
communities. And unlikely other monetary flows, remittances are countercyclical. Family
members abroad are likely to be even more motivated to give in times of hardship, even if
their own financial situation has deteriorated as well. In this way, remittances are a form of
insurance, helping families and communities weather external shocks.

To the extent that remittances finance education and health and increase investment,
remittances could have a positive effect on economic growth. In the economies where the
financial system is underdeveloped, remittances may alleviate credit constraints and act as
a substitute for financial development. Empirical evidence on the growth effects of
remittances, however, remains mixed. In part, this is because the effects of remittances on
human and physical capital are realized over a very long time. This is also partly due to the
difficulty associated with disentangling remittances' countercyclical response to growth,
which implies that the causality runs from growth to remittances, when in fact the
correlation between the two variables is negative.

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Theoretical Framework
Using the target savings model of Glytos (1988), this study progresses from the premise
that migrants' remittances are driven by the need to accumulate a certain amount of money
which they plan to invest in assets like education, health services and even housing. The
growth of entrepreneurship has also been linked to such migrant target savings habit in

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