Migration plays key role in development

Yesterday’s New York Times magazine makes an important point on the key role of migration in the development process. Although much of the piece is about the pain of separated families it points out that:

“Migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world’s foreign-aid budgets combined. These sums — “remittances” — bring Morocco more money than tourism does. They bring Sri Lanka more money than tea does.

“The numbers, which have doubled in the past five years, have riveted the attention of development experts who once paid them little mind. One study after another has examined how private money, in the form of remittances, might serve the public good. A growing number of economists see migrants, and the money they send home, as a part of the solution to global poverty.”

This point is alluded to in my 17 April post on the globalisation of labour chapter in the latest World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund. It is examined in more detail in an essay in chapter two (PDF) of the April 2005 World Economic Outlook.