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Kiel Institute Focus
| No. 13 December 19, 2011 by Marcus Böhme, Toman Omar Mahmoud and Rainer Thiele |
Migration: Engine of Development
Migration is a natural phenomenon. People have always left their homeland in search of a better live in new environments. Today, international migration flows are primarily driven by the tremendous wage differentials between countries. About 215 million people currently live outside their country of birth. In 2010 alone, they sent remittances worth more than US$ 300 billion to their families in their countries of origin. In recent years, international migration and in particular the volume of remittances has grown rapidly. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of migrants increased by more than forty percent while the volume of remittances even increased tenfold.