Working abroad – the patterns of migration flows and remittances across countries Anne Harrison, Tolani Britton and Annika Swanson

Working abroad – the patterns of migration flows and remittances across countries

• Anne Harrison, Tolani Britton and Annika Swanson

Round Table on Sustainable Development

• Ministerial level meetings directed to finding means to implement goals agreed internationally to further sustainable development globally

• Focus on the impacts of OECD countries on countries in the rest of the world

Sustainable development

• Economic development which respects the contribution of the environment and the fact that economies ultimately function for the benefit of people

International agreements

• Plan of implementation from WSSD

• MDGs

• Monterrey consensus on investment and development

• Doha development agreement

Sustaining whose development?

• Presented to a meeting of the Round Table in November 2003

• Presented none data sets

• Five use data concerning international flows

• Services
• FDI
• Debt
• Remittances

Migrants and remittances

• Part of the social aspect of sustainable development

• Highly topical, not fully understood, not always well represented

• Can an examination of the data help understanding and representation?

• Doha mode 4

Country coverage

• All 30 OECD countries

• 27 large non-OECD countries

• 85% of population, 97% of GDP

• Plus 17 regional “other” groups covering the remaining 160-170 countries

Goal

• Take IMF data on remittances and estimate the match between country of origin and destination

• Initially work with data for 2000 only

First task – pattern of migrants

• Have information on number of migrants in each country, no comprehensive information on number of nationals abroad and the countries where are

• Set about building a matrix of migrants for the world for 2000

Problems

• Nationality, citizenship, place of birth

• Refugees

• Length of stay

• Worker or family member

• Links to home country

• Skill level

• Year data available

Results

Nationals abroad (mn)

• Russia 10.2

• Mexico 7.9

• India 7.2

• Ukraine 4.7

• Philippines 4.1

• UK 3.4

• Bangladesh 3.3

Remittances

• Add workers’ remittances and compensation of employees

• Credits 41.8 + 60.7 = 102.5

• Debits 45.2 + 54.9 = 100.1

• Philippines

• Ignore migrants transfers

Remittances per migrant

• Annex table 6

• Outflow per migrant (col 4)broadly consistent across countries

• Estimate missing countries – Nigeria, Qatar, UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada

Border workers

• Credits

• France 7.9

• Belgium/Lux 3.7

• Germany 3.4

• Italy 1.5

• Total 19.4

Receipts per national abroad

• Annex table 6 col 6, col 9

• Again reasonably consistent across countries at similar levels of development and with IMF data

Geographical groupings

Impact on GDP

• Annex table 6 cols 7 and 10

• Largest impact Sudan 106.8

• Philippines 105.9

• Bangladesh 104.0

Perception

• Remittances come from OECD countries

Data

Perception

• Most remittances go to the third world

Data

Results