International Migrants' Remittances in the Philippines

Abstract

After more than a decade of poor economic performance and political turmoil, the Philippines has experienced an increase in temporary and permanent international emigration. With this has come a greater dependence on the remittances from these out migrants. In 1991, more than 665,000 Philippine nationals left the country (91% as contract workers, NSO 1992a) to join a growing overseas community. Of more than 11 million families in the Philippines, 17 % reported having received some sort of income from abroad in 1991. In total, such income represented 8 % of the country's household income (NSO 1992b). Despite the importance of these financial flows, official statistics on remittances in the Philippines are seriously underestimated and not clearly defined. Previous micro studies have also failed to use data representative of the whole country. These weaknesses are overcome in this study by using previously little-used microdata sets to reexamine remittances. Among the findings, several stand out. Remittances are important because of their size and because of the large numbers of households relying on them. More substantively, multivariate analysis of the data suggests that length of stay abroad affects amounts remitted. The analysis also shows that household location and regional labour market conditions influence the level of remittances. The implications for policy are important. Unless we can influence some of these determinants, permissive policies may have more success than coercive ones.