Remittances, Policy, and Diaspora

Global remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached an estimated $685 billion in 2024, according to World Bank figures, a flow that now dwarfs official development aid to those countries combined and, in many years, exceeds foreign direct investment as well. India has been the world's single largest recipient in absolute terms for years running, receiving over $125 billion in 2023, driven by its large diaspora of skilled professionals in the Gulf states, North America, and Europe. The Philippines relies even more heavily on remittances relative to its economy: overseas Filipino workers, a category that includes everyone from nurses and domestic workers in the Gulf and Hong Kong to seafarers who make up a large share of the world's commercial shipping crews, sent home around $38 billion in 2023, equivalent to roughly 8 to 9 percent of Philippine GDP. Central America shows the most extreme dependence of all: remittances, sent overwhelmingly by migrants working in the United States, amounted to roughly 24 percent of El Salvador's GDP and over 25 percent of Honduras's GDP in recent years, making household consumption in both countries substantially dependent on money earned abroad rather than domestically.