The impact of remittances from migrant workers
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:21AM INTERNATIONAL: "Migration and development: The aid workers who really help; How much do migrants, by sending remittances and other means, act as catalysts for development in the countries they leave behind?" The Economist, 10 October 2009.
Study of 200m migrant workers and their impact on home countries: it is huge and benign.
First off is the obvious flow of wages.
World Bank says guest workers send home $328B last years, whereas OECD countries (Old Core) managed $120B in official developmental aid (ODA). India got $52B, way more than the foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from the rest of the world.
Does this money go to the poorest in those states?
No, it goes to the families of the most ambitious and hardest-working and the ones willing to take the most chances and sacrifice more than others by working abroad.
The key thing? Virtually no corruption along the way, compared to the waste of ODA and the graft in FDI.
Moreover, when disaster strikes, this money moves one helluva lot faster than ODA or disaster funds.
Even cooler, some Latin American states are kicking in matching funds if the remittances are directed at infrastructure development.
Cooler still: some OECD countries are talking about bundling ODA that way.
All this happens because 3% of the world decides to work abroad.
Imagine what happens when those number rise?
What does this tell us? Globalization is very good.
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