Nearly 200 million people in the world live outside their country of birth. Many move from low- and middle-income countries (Figure 1, p. 18) to live in high-income countries. Remittances are the money foreign workers send to their home countries, usually to their families at home.
Recorded remittance flows to poorer countries in 2007 are estimated at US$251 billion. The true amount, including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels, is believed to be much larger. Remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries (Figure 2) are more than twice as large as total development aid and represent the largest source of foreign exchange for many countries. Remittances are often larger than foreign investment too.
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