LATIN AMERICA: Remittances Rescue Millions from Poverty
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Nov 25 (IPS) - The money sent home by migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean amounted to 45 billion dollars last year, double the total from 10 years ago. Thanks to these remittances, an estimated 2.5 million people in the region have been able to escape poverty.
Although remittances do little to reduce poverty for the population at large, the impact is huge for those who directly receive the money from abroad. At least half of the people in households with ties to emigrants would be poor if they did not receive remittances, while others who are living in poverty would be extremely poor.
These are some of the conclusions reached by the Social Panorama of Latin America 2005, released Friday by the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) at its headquarters in Chile.
The report states that poverty and extreme poverty in the region, which affect a total of 301 million people, are slowly being reduced thanks to remittances.
Francisco Morales, whose 25-year-old son José sends him 200 dollars a month from the United States, told IPS that "I would be in the streets" without the extra income.
"Here (in Mexico City) there is no work, and I need medication for my diabetes. Plus, my daughter is still studying and needs help. So that money contributes to reducing our poverty," said Morales, a widower who works as a night doorman in an apartment building.
If Mexico, which receives nearly 40 percent of the region's total remittances, did not have that income, the poverty rate in rural areas would be 10 percent higher, according to the National Population Council.
The countryside, home to 25 million of Mexico's 104 million people, accounts for 75 percent of the country's poor.
The remittances received by the region doubled in the past 10 years and are still growing. Mexico and Central America account for 55 percent of the total, South America 31 percent, and the Caribbean 14 percent.
The majority of the funds come from immigrants living in the United States. But significant amounts are also sent home from migrants in Canada, Spain and Japan, which is home to more than 254,000 Brazilians, according to a 2004 study by the Organisation of American States (OAS).
The OAS study also noted that remittances do not in and of themselves represent a solution to poverty, and that in many - perhaps most - cases, the funds represent temporary relief from poverty for families, rather than a permanent route to financial security.
