I was looking around at some data on DataGov and came across some statistics that astounded me, so I decided to share. The chart below shows remittances by country as a percentage of that country's GDP. In other words, What percentage of Honduras's GDP is money that was sent home by immigrants working abroad? Take a look at the charts below.
Remittances as percent of GDP
In 1979 the percent of GDP that remittances represented was .05%. In 2008, it's 20%. The data is similar for El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Nicaragua. As a whole, 6.53% of Latin America's GDP was generated by workers outside of their home countries.
This suggests to me that the last 30 years of neoliberal economic policy, structural adjustments, and free trade agreements have had the dual effect of a.) encouraging Latinos to emigrate to the United States, and b.) increasing Latin American dependency on the US to very unhealthy levels. It is true that during this same time these economies did improve. But what does it mean when a large chunk of that growth is due to economic activity that is physically risky, destroys the social fabric of home communites, and breaks the receiving country's laws?
But I'm no economist. Other thoughts on how to interpret this data?
2 comments:
Your analysis is precisely right. This is what globalization looks like-- the economy of Honduras is no longer defined by the borders of the country, with a Honduran diaspora providing the economic support that industry within the country simply cannot.
The growth pattern suggests that workers migrating out of Latin America are those able to get higher paying jobs abroad. I wonder what percent of the payroll of the Cleveland Clinic is remitted.
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