SENDING MONEY HOME.

SENDING MONEY HOME. Jason DeParle has an article in the New York Times for March 17 about an economist who has measured the amount and the importance of remittances that are sent home to poorer countries by migrant workers. Dilip Ratha established that remittances for the Philippines were fifty times greater than had been estimated. For some small countries, remittances are more than twenty per cent of national income. Remittances are three times larger than the total for world foreign aid. They also have advantages over foreign aid–they can’t be skimmed and their use is usually well-monitored by the grantor. Ratha grew up speaking Sambalpuri, a language which “lacks a written script.” A teacher says that students in his village are “astonished that this young man from Sindhekela flies around in planes.” Sindhekela now has three cellphone towers; all the children now have shoes. Ratha attributes this to internal migration–remittances from migrants to India’s cities.