Saturday, November 26, 2005
Remittances by Country
The Economist has the latest remittances numbers for several countries, as reported by the World Bank. As has been the norm the past several years, India tops the list of recipients of inward remittances, though China seems to have overtaken Mexico to claim the second spot.
Interestingly, this set of numbers contradicts another set (pg 22) from the World Bank's Global Development Finance 2005 report. According to the GDFR, India's expected inward remittances for 2004 was $23 billion. More importantly though, it records Chinese remittances at $4.6 billion in 2003. According to the chart above, that $4.6 billion number has shot up to about $21 billion in 2 years. Now, that's more likely to be statistical voodoo than overseas Chinese sending almost five times as much money home in 2005 as in 2003. If you have any ideas on why there is this large discrepancy beyond the obvious (different metrics), please let me know.
As an aside, I think it would be a fun exercice to correlate remittances as a percentage of GDP across a larger group of countries. In addition, compile a list a countries which have suffered the most from brain drain, in terms of number of educated graduates living elsewhere. For example, India loses about 4.3% of her graduate population while Ghana loses about 47% and Guyana about 89% of her educated population. I suspect these two sets of numbers side-by-side might reveal something interesting about the true impact of brain drain.
Interestingly, this set of numbers contradicts another set (pg 22) from the World Bank's Global Development Finance 2005 report. According to the GDFR, India's expected inward remittances for 2004 was $23 billion. More importantly though, it records Chinese remittances at $4.6 billion in 2003. According to the chart above, that $4.6 billion number has shot up to about $21 billion in 2 years. Now, that's more likely to be statistical voodoo than overseas Chinese sending almost five times as much money home in 2005 as in 2003. If you have any ideas on why there is this large discrepancy beyond the obvious (different metrics), please let me know.
As an aside, I think it would be a fun exercice to correlate remittances as a percentage of GDP across a larger group of countries. In addition, compile a list a countries which have suffered the most from brain drain, in terms of number of educated graduates living elsewhere. For example, India loses about 4.3% of her graduate population while Ghana loses about 47% and Guyana about 89% of her educated population. I suspect these two sets of numbers side-by-side might reveal something interesting about the true impact of brain drain.
