Jan 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition
Migrants' remittances help ease poverty back home, but they are not a cure-all
SEVEN years into the century a remarkable figure was produced. Foreigners in America sent home $275m in a single year, a total not far short of the value of all the gold mined in America. They used 2,625 money agents to do so, mostly through grocers, bakers and other small immigrant shops. New York alone had 500, Chicago 75 and Pittsburgh 50. The New York Times gasped at the numbers a little later, in 1910, and noted that migrants were shunning bigger banks as “the Italian and the Magyar and the Croat and the Slovak [are] simple, ignorant foreigners”.
The sum of $275m in 1907 was $6.2 billion in today's money. That sounds a lot until you look at the current figures, which are probably in the region of $240 billion-300 billion. Neglected for some time by academics and policymakers, remittances have recently been rediscovered and have become the darling of many development experts. [Read more]
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