Remittances ~ The Economist on Family Capital

The Economist spotlights The aid workers who really help on the powerful role of migrants sending money home to families, an amount often higher than formal foreign direct investment and more valuable...

"Beyond cash remittances, do migrants boost human welfare in other ways? The UN’s latest Human Development Report, published on October 5th, makes a refreshing attempt to say yes. Rather than calling migration a problem to be solved, it offers the development case in favour of the freer movement of labour. Most obviously, note the authors, by crossing a border most migrants find a richer, longer, healthier and better-educated life than they would otherwise have had: over three-quarters go to a country with a higher rank on the human development index. The report (and others) also makes the case that migrants send home useful values as well as cash. Demetrios Papademetriou, head of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC, argues that such “knowledge transfers, the social and political remittances” are very important. He and other migration watchers are turning their attention from the flow of money to the flow of ideas."

Migrant money represents a kind of Family Capitalism that's potentially hugely powerful, but today quite fragmented and un-organized. But big: check out this UNDP map...