Global Economic Prospects 2006

Global Economic Prospects 2006
Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 182
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 082136345X

International migration, the movement of people across international boundaries to improve economic opportunity, has enormous implications for growth and welfare in both origin and destination countries. An important benefit to developing countries is the receipt of remittances or transfers from income earned by overseas emigrants. Official data show that development countries' remittance receipts totaled 160 billion in 2004, more than twice the size of official aid. This year's edition of Global Economic Prospects focuses on remittances and migration. The bulk of the book covers remittances.

The Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Human Capital

The Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Human Capital
Author: Pablo Acosta
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2007
Genre: Debt Markets
ISBN:

This paper explores the impact of remittances on poverty, education, and health in 11 Latin American countries using nationally representative household surveys and making an explicit attempt to account for one of the inherent costs associated with migration -- the potential income that the migrant may have made at home. The main findings of the study are the following: (1) regardless of the counterfactual used remittances appear to lower poverty levels in most recipient countries; (2) yet despite this general tendency, the estimated impacts tend to be modes; and (3) there is significant country heterogeneity in the poverty reduction impact of remittances' flows. Among the aspects that have been identified in the paper that may lead to varying outcomes across countries are the percentage of households reporting remittances income, the share of remittances of recipient households belonging to the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, and the relative importance of remittances flows with respect to GDP. While remittances tend to have positive effects on education and health, this impact is often restricted to specific groups of the population.

Migration and Poverty

Migration and Poverty
Author: Edmundo Murrugarra
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2010-11-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821384376

This volume uses recent research from the World Bank to document and analyze the bidirectional relationship between poverty and migration in developing countries. The case studies chapters compiled in this book (from Tanzania, Nepal, Albania and Nicaragua), as well as the last, policy-oriented chapter illustrate the diversity of migration experience and tackle the complicated nexus between migration and poverty reduction. Two main messages emerge: Although evidence indicates that migration reduces poverty, it also shows that migration opportunities of the poor differ from that of the rest. In general, the evidence suggests that the poor either migrate less or migrate to low return destinations. As a consequence, many developing countries are not maximizing the poverty-reducing potential of migration. The main reason behind this outcome is difficulties in access to remunerative migration opportunities and the high costs associated with migrating. It is shown, for example, that reducing migration costs makes migration more pro-poor. The volume shows that developing countries governments are not without means to improve this situation. Several of the country examples offer a few policy recommendations towards this end.

Case Study on South-South Cooperation: PRC-ADB Knowledge-Sharing Platform

Case Study on South-South Cooperation: PRC-ADB Knowledge-Sharing Platform
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-08-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9290928336

This publication showcases the beginnings of the People‘s Republic of China–Asian Development Bank knowledge sharing platform, its context, activities, challenges, and lessons learned. It concludes by mapping out the next steps to bring it to its strategic mission.

Understanding Changes in Poverty

Understanding Changes in Poverty
Author: Gabriela Inchauste
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464802998

The 2015 Millennium Development Goal to reduce by 50 percent the share of the world's population living in extreme poverty was met early. The number of individuals in developing countries who live in extreme poverty had decreased from 43 percent in 1990 to 21 percent by 2010. Yet, with 1.2 billion people still struggling today, we have a long way to go. What can we learn from the recent success of reducing extreme poverty? Understanding Changes in Poverty brings together different methods to decompose the contributions to poverty reduction. A simple approach quantifies the contribution of changes in demographics, employment, earnings, public transfers, and remittances to poverty reduction. A more complex approach quantifies the contributions to poverty reduction from changes in individual and household characteristics, including changes in the sectoral, occupational, and educational structure of the workforce, as well as changes in the returns to individual and household characteristics. Understanding Changes in Poverty implements these approaches and finds that labor income growth--that is, growth in income per worker rather than an increase in the number of employed workers--was the largest contributor to moderate poverty reduction in 21 countries experiencing substantial reductions in poverty over the past decade. Changes in demographics, public transfers, and remittances helped, but made relatively smaller contributions to poverty reduction. Further decompositions in three countries find that labor income grew mainly because of higher returns to human capital endowments, signaling increases in productivity, higher relative price of labor, or both. Understanding Changes in Poverty will be of particular relevance to development practitioners interested in better understanding distributional changes over time. The methods and tools presented in this book can also be applied to better understand changes in inequality or any other distributional change.

Remittances

Remittances
Author: Samuel Munzele Maimbo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821357948

Migrants have long faced unwarranted constraints to sending money to family members and relatives in their home countries, among them costly fees and commissions, inconvenient formal banking hours, and inefficient domestic banking services that delay final payment to the beneficiaries. Yet such remittances are perhaps the largest source of external finance in developing countries. Officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries exceeded US$125 billion in 2004, making them the second largest source of development finance after foreign direct investment. This book demonstrates that governments in developing countries increasingly recognize the importance of remittance flows and are quickly addressing these constraints.

Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy

Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy
Author: Manuel Orozco
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781588268716

Manuel Orozco moves beyond the numbers to provide a uniquely comprehensive, historically informed overview and analysis of the complex role of migrant remittances in the global economy. How do patterns of migration and remittances differ across regions? What kinds of regulatory and institutional frameworks best support the contributions of remittances to local development? What has been the impact of remittances on migrants and their families? Drawing on empirical data from five continents and firmly grounded in theory, Orozco¿s work reflects the evolution of our understanding about the importance of migrant remittances and the policies that govern them.

What is the Impact of International Remittances on Poverty and Inequality in Latin America?

What is the Impact of International Remittances on Poverty and Inequality in Latin America?
Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2007
Genre: Debt Markets
ISBN:

Workers' remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have increased growth and reduced inequality and poverty. These results are robust to the use of different instruments that attempt to correct for the potential endogeneity of remittances. Household survey-based estimates for 10 LAC countries confirm that remittances have negative albeit relatively small inequality and poverty-reducing effects, even after imputations for the potential home earnings of migrants.

Remittances and Development

Remittances and Development
Author: Pablo Fajnzylber
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2008-02-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821368710

Workers' remittances have become a major source of financing for developing countries and are especially important in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is at the top of the ranking of remittance receiving regions in the world. While there has been a recent surge in analytical work on the topic, this book is motivated by the large heterogeneity in migration and remittance patterns across countries and regions, and by the fact that existing evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean is restricted to only a few countries, such as Mexico and El Salvador. Because the nature of the phenomenon varies across countries, its development impact and policy implications are also likely to differ in ways that are still largely unknown. This book helps fill the gap by exploring, in the specific context of Latin America and Caribbean countries, some of the main questions faced by policymakers when trying to respond to increasing remittances flows. The book relies on cross-country panel data and household surveys for 11 Latin American countries to explore the development impact of remittance flows along several dimensions: growth, poverty, inequality, schooling, health, labor supply, financial development, and real exchange rates.

Migration and Remittances During the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond

Migration and Remittances During the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond
Author: Ibrahim Sirkeci
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2012-05-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821388266

During the 2008 financial crisis, the possible changes in remittance-sending behavior and potential avenues to alleviate a probable decline in remittance flows became concerns. This book brings together a wide array of studies from around the world focusing on the recent trends in remittance flows. The authors have gathered a select group of researchers from academic, practitioner and policy making bodies. Thus the book can be seen as a conversation between the different stakeholders involved in or affected by remittance flows globally. The book is a first-of-its-kind attempt to analyze the effects of an ongoing crisis on remittance flows globally. Data analyzed by the book reveals three trends. First, The more diversified the destinations and the labour markets for migrants the more resilient are the remittances sent by migrants. Second, the lower the barriers to labor mobility, the stronger the link between remittances and economic cycles in that corridor. And third, as remittances proved to be relatively resilient in comparison to private capital flows, many remittance-dependent countries became even more dependent on remittance inflows for meeting external financing needs. There are several reasons for migration and remittances to be relatively resilient to the crisis. First, remittances are sent by the stock (cumulative flows) of migrants, not only by the recent arrivals (in fact, recent arrivals often do not remit as regularly as they must establish themselves in their new homes). Second, contrary to expectations, return migration did not take place as expected even as the financial crisis reduced employment opportunities in the US and Europe. Third, in addition to the persistence of migrant stocks that lent persistence to remittance flows, existing migrants often absorbed income shocks and continued to send money home. Fourth, if some migrants did return or had the intention to return, they tended to take their savings back to their country of origin. Finally, exchange rate movements during the crisis caused unexpected changes in remittance behavior: as local currencies of many remittance recipient countries depreciated sharply against the US dollar, they produced a “sale” effect on remittance behavior of migrants in the US and other destination countries.