Definition: Remittances
Remittances (remesas in Spanish) are the money immigrants send to their home country.
REMITTERS: A STATISTICAL SNAPSHOT
Remitters come disproportionately from the working poor, and many are in the United States illegally. They remit on average 12.6 times a year, typically $150/200/250 each time. These remittances constitute approximately 10% of their household income. A quarter of remitters send money home first, even before paying their own bills.
47% of all Hispanics born outside the U.S. regularly send money to their country of origin.
57% of immigrants from El Salvador send remittances
60% of U.S. remittance senders are male
63% are under the age of 40; the average age is 37
59% are married
59% have not completed high school
57% make less than $30,000 a year
64% of those who are employed are unskilled laborers
45% say they plan to move back to their home country
55% do not have credit cards
43% do not have bank accounts
EL SALVADOR: REMITTANCE NATION
2.5 million Salvadorans, legal and illegal, live in the U.S., more than one third the total in El Salvador itself. El Salvador's principal export is its people, after that, coffee, sugar, rice. El Salvador's principal import are remittances from Salvadorans in the U.S., estimated at $2.5 billion annually, 17.1% of the GDP. Remittances to El Salvador have increased by more than 6 percent a year for more than a decade, with double-digit growth more recently. Remittances to El Salvador represent 133 percent of all exports, 655 percent of foreign direct investment, and 91 percent of the government budget. Remittance flows to El Salvador are so large the country completely dollarized its economy in 2001. 22 percent of households in El Salvador receive remittances, more than any other Latin American country. Three quarters of that money goes to household expenditures. El Salvador has a 13 percent sales tax and no property tax. Since remittances are primarily used for consumption, they amount to the poorest people in the country subsidizing the government.
SOURCES: Inter-America Development Bank, Pew Hispanic Center, The Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, USAID, World Bank, Inter American Dialogue, Foreign Affairs en EspañolFrom : http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/onehome/chinameca_remittances.shtml
2 comments:
where did this blog come from?? kind of out of character for your regular posts!
interesting info, though!
The more I get to know people here, the more I want to know about their country and it´s history. There will probably be more blogs like this to come. :)
And I recently watched the movie Voces Inocentes and recommend it to everyone, though I don´t know if there is an English translation of it. It´s about child soldiering during El Salvador´s civil war. Really powerful.
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