High income | Personal remittances, received (current US$)

Personal remittances comprise personal transfers and compensation of employees. Personal transfers consist of all current transfers in cash or in kind made or received by resident households to or from nonresident households. Personal transfers thus include all current transfers between resident and nonresident individuals. Compensation of employees refers to the income of border, seasonal, and other short-term workers who are employed in an economy where they are not resident and of residents employed by nonresident entities. Data are the sum of two items defined in the sixth edition of the IMF's Balance of Payments Manual: personal transfers and compensation of employees. Data are in current U.S. dollars. Development relevance: Movement of people, most often through migration, is a significant part of global integration. Migrants contribute to the economies of both their host country and their country of origin. Yet reliable statistics on migration are difficult to collect and are often incomplete, making international comparisons a challenge. In most developed countries, refugees are admitted for resettlement and are routinely included in population counts by censuses or population registers. Globally, the number of refugees at end 2010 was 10.55 million, including 597,300 people considered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to be in a refugee-like situation; developing countries hosted 8.5 million refugees, or 80 percent of the global refugee population. Global migration patterns have become increasingly complex in modern times, involving not just refugees, but also millions of economic migrants. But refugees and migrants, even if they often travel in the same way, are fundamentally different, and for that reason are treated very differently under modern international law. Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom. They have no protection from their own state - indeed it is often their own government that is threatening to persecute them. If other countries do not let them in, and do not help them once they are in, then they may be condemning them to death - or to an intolerable life in the shadows, without sustenance and without rights. Limitations and exceptions: Remittance transactions have grown in importance over the past decade. In a number of developing economies, receipts of remittances have become an important and stable source of funds that exceeds receipts from exports of goods and services or from financial inflows on foreign direct investment. But the quality of statistical remittance data is not high. Remittances are a challenge to measure because of their nature. They are heterogeneous with numerous small transactions conducted by individuals through a wide variety of channels: formal channels, such as electronic wire, or through informal channels, such as cash or goods carried across borders. The large number of remittance transactions and the multitude of channels pose challenges to the compilation of comprehensive statistics. The small size of individual transactions means that they often go undetected by typical data source systems, although the aggregate level of transactions may be substantial. Because of difficulties in obtaining data on informal remittance transactions, the remittance transactions undertaken through informal channels are sometimes not well covered in current balance of payments data. As a result, even though direct measurement of remittances - through transactions reporting or surveys - may be considered preferable if feasible, some countries instead combine different sources and estimation methods to achieve better coverage, by using direct measurements where practical and supplemented estimates where they are not. Model-based approaches are used in some countries as they are flexible. Compilers can design models to fill gaps in data sources or to provide global totals. However, only reliable input data can lead to sound estimates, regardless of the sophistication of an estimation method or econometric model. Indirect data are converted to remittance estimates using a set of assumptions. These assumptions should be plausible, but it is often not possible to test or verify these assumptions and also the results in practice. Statistical concept and methodology: The two main components of personal remittances, "personal transfers" and "compensation of employees", are items in the balance of payments (BPM6) framework. Both of these standard components are recorded in the current account. "Personal transfers", a new item in the Balance of Payments (BPM6) represents a broader definition of worker remittances. Personal transfers include all current transfers in cash or in kind between resident and nonresident individuals, independent of the source of income of the sender (irrespective of whether the sender receives income from labor, entrepreneurial or property income, social benefits, and any other types of transfers; or disposes assets) and the relationship between the households (irrespective of whether they are related or unrelated individuals). Compensation of employees refers to the income of border, seasonal, and other short-term workers who are employed in an economy where they are not resident and of residents employed by nonresident entities. Compensation of employees represents remuneration in return for the labor input to the production process contributed by an individual in an employer-employee relationship with the enterprise. Compensation of employees is recorded gross and includes amounts paid by the employee as taxes or for other purposes in the economy where the work is performed. Compensation of employees has three main components: wages and salaries in cash, wages and salaries in kind, and employers' social contributions.
Publisher
The World Bank
Origin
High income
Records
63
Source
High income | Personal remittances, received (current US$)
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970 1644521483.817
1971 2155367565.17
1972 2658606068.735
1973 2851601020.619
1974 2648670927.767
1975 6896448115.783
1976 7409949936.606
1977 10585919012.375
1978 13486539349.729
1979 16451276696.054
1980 19317665582.836
1981 17975166968.539
1982 17588604486.722
1983 16567357378.174
1984 15990013667.381
1985 16030460399.934
1986 21871506878.603
1987 27543224868.114
1988 31389924581.843
1989 33124622840.87
1990 39030447143.151
1991 40305529712.12
1992 42934326734.954
1993 41279015112.192
1994 42794935841.336
1995 44514404805.684
1996 44547146632.715
1997 48055378223.879
1998 49283978723.909
1999 48114000022.404
2000 47670841730.788
2001 49548939500.114
2002 54986938714.554
2003 65742936245.881
2004 76048667754.851
2005 82718342633.019
2006 92451690426.704
2007 109146330116.03
2008 125311667070.11
2009 118451745588.04
2010 118212639129.88
2011 131291044610.6
2012 129512012294.07
2013 143384827111.73
2014 149316889265.78
2015 139359922123.77
2016 139862874544.46
2017 148144532400.85
2018 155848033679.74
2019 161128901909.92
2020 156735551077.54
2021 171353283072.45
2022 178745735260.34

High income | Personal remittances, received (current US$)

Personal remittances comprise personal transfers and compensation of employees. Personal transfers consist of all current transfers in cash or in kind made or received by resident households to or from nonresident households. Personal transfers thus include all current transfers between resident and nonresident individuals. Compensation of employees refers to the income of border, seasonal, and other short-term workers who are employed in an economy where they are not resident and of residents employed by nonresident entities. Data are the sum of two items defined in the sixth edition of the IMF's Balance of Payments Manual: personal transfers and compensation of employees. Data are in current U.S. dollars. Development relevance: Movement of people, most often through migration, is a significant part of global integration. Migrants contribute to the economies of both their host country and their country of origin. Yet reliable statistics on migration are difficult to collect and are often incomplete, making international comparisons a challenge. In most developed countries, refugees are admitted for resettlement and are routinely included in population counts by censuses or population registers. Globally, the number of refugees at end 2010 was 10.55 million, including 597,300 people considered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to be in a refugee-like situation; developing countries hosted 8.5 million refugees, or 80 percent of the global refugee population. Global migration patterns have become increasingly complex in modern times, involving not just refugees, but also millions of economic migrants. But refugees and migrants, even if they often travel in the same way, are fundamentally different, and for that reason are treated very differently under modern international law. Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom. They have no protection from their own state - indeed it is often their own government that is threatening to persecute them. If other countries do not let them in, and do not help them once they are in, then they may be condemning them to death - or to an intolerable life in the shadows, without sustenance and without rights. Limitations and exceptions: Remittance transactions have grown in importance over the past decade. In a number of developing economies, receipts of remittances have become an important and stable source of funds that exceeds receipts from exports of goods and services or from financial inflows on foreign direct investment. But the quality of statistical remittance data is not high. Remittances are a challenge to measure because of their nature. They are heterogeneous with numerous small transactions conducted by individuals through a wide variety of channels: formal channels, such as electronic wire, or through informal channels, such as cash or goods carried across borders. The large number of remittance transactions and the multitude of channels pose challenges to the compilation of comprehensive statistics. The small size of individual transactions means that they often go undetected by typical data source systems, although the aggregate level of transactions may be substantial. Because of difficulties in obtaining data on informal remittance transactions, the remittance transactions undertaken through informal channels are sometimes not well covered in current balance of payments data. As a result, even though direct measurement of remittances - through transactions reporting or surveys - may be considered preferable if feasible, some countries instead combine different sources and estimation methods to achieve better coverage, by using direct measurements where practical and supplemented estimates where they are not. Model-based approaches are used in some countries as they are flexible. Compilers can design models to fill gaps in data sources or to provide global totals. However, only reliable input data can lead to sound estimates, regardless of the sophistication of an estimation method or econometric model. Indirect data are converted to remittance estimates using a set of assumptions. These assumptions should be plausible, but it is often not possible to test or verify these assumptions and also the results in practice. Statistical concept and methodology: The two main components of personal remittances, "personal transfers" and "compensation of employees", are items in the balance of payments (BPM6) framework. Both of these standard components are recorded in the current account. "Personal transfers", a new item in the Balance of Payments (BPM6) represents a broader definition of worker remittances. Personal transfers include all current transfers in cash or in kind between resident and nonresident individuals, independent of the source of income of the sender (irrespective of whether the sender receives income from labor, entrepreneurial or property income, social benefits, and any other types of transfers; or disposes assets) and the relationship between the households (irrespective of whether they are related or unrelated individuals). Compensation of employees refers to the income of border, seasonal, and other short-term workers who are employed in an economy where they are not resident and of residents employed by nonresident entities. Compensation of employees represents remuneration in return for the labor input to the production process contributed by an individual in an employer-employee relationship with the enterprise. Compensation of employees is recorded gross and includes amounts paid by the employee as taxes or for other purposes in the economy where the work is performed. Compensation of employees has three main components: wages and salaries in cash, wages and salaries in kind, and employers' social contributions.
Publisher
The World Bank
Origin
High income
Records
63
Source