Workers remittances and economic development: Which role for education?

Abstract

In the past decades, international remittance inflows have significantly increased in developing nations. Their importance is being acknowledged due to their scale and growth, which makes them stand out on an aggregate and per capita basis; Adams (2011) reports that remittances make up 30 percent to 40 percent of household income in developing countries. Numerous developing countries receive international remittances (sent by family members that have emigrated) in volumes that exceed the volume of public aid, private capital flows, or foreign direct investment. Certified international remittances come after foreign direct investments as a major source of external finance, as they have grown from USD 3.3 billion to a staggering USD 289.4 billion between 1975 and 2007 (World Bank, 2009). This represents about twice the volume of official aid, in both absolute terms and as a share of GDP (Aggarwal et al., 2011), with the remittances ratio to GDP exceeding 1 percent in 60 nations (Bhaskara and Hassan, 2011). Some developing countries have had more international remittances than they do official development assistance (ODA) as well as foreign direct investments (FDI), and have, in 2010 alone, received over USD 325 billion in remittances (Ratha, 2003; Yang, 2011). These remittances are made up of transfers that involve migrants sending money back to their home nations.