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Resilience: COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens - Migration and Development Brief 34

The latest Migration and Development Brief provides updates on global trends in migration and remittances. It highlights developments related to migration-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for which the World Bank is a custodian: increasing the volume of remittances as a percentage of gross domestic product (SDG indicator 17.3.2) and reducing remittance costs (SDG indicator 10.c.1). Defying predictions, remittance flows have proved to be resilient during the COVID-19 crisis. In 2020, officially recorded remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $540 billion, only 1.6 percent below the $548 billion seen in 2019. Remittances exceeded foreign direct investment flows by a wider margin in 2020. Excluding China, remittance flows surpassed the sum of foreign direct investment and official development assistance. Remittances have therefore become an important consumption smoothing mechanism for the recipient households and, as such, they form an increasingly important (private) element of global social protection systems.

Date of Publication
Type of Resource
Target Audience
Academia
Government
Intergovernmental Organization
Source / Publisher
World Bank Group
KNOMAD
Language
English
Geographic Scope
Global
Workstream Output
No
Regional Review Process
No
GCM Objectives
Cross Cutting Theme
Sustainable development
SDG Indicators
Indicator 10.c.1
Indicator 17.3.2
Keywords
Remittances
Status
Published

*References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).