The Effect of International Migration on Tax Morale in the Home Country: Evidence from Poland

International migration represents a potential channel for the transmission of norms, attitudes, and values back to the home countries. In this paper, we explore how the international migration of individuals affects tax morale and aversion to the free-riding of their household members left in the home country. We use a rich longitudinal household-level database which is representative of Polish society in the period 2007- 2015 — one of the most important countries of emigration in the EU — and allows us to observe social attitudes and values of individuals before and after the actual migration of a member of the household. Our results show that having a migrant in the household has a significant and positive effect on tax morale and increases aversion toward free-riding of those who stay put. We demonstrate that the transmission of this important form of social remittances crucially depends on the characteristics — gender, level of education, role in the household — of both those who migrate and those who stay put within the household. The identification of the effects relies on individual-level longitudinal data which allows us to rule out any time-constant confounding factor affecting both international migrations of family members and individual attitudes toward tax avoidance.