Immigrants & Remittances: Why do people keep sending money back “home” for decades?

Many studies by World Bank and UN Population Division, IOM (International Office for Migration) and many other organizations, etc. have hacked away at this question. The answer is not so simple:

• Family bonding in countries outside the developed world are very different.
• Migrant parents will keep paying for home maintenance till about 22-24 years on average (from birth to college graduation).
• Some will pay even more, because college funds might have been borrowed.
• Quite a few will take loans to get their children married and which will require another 4-5 years of more work to pay back the loan.
• Loan dependencies are one of the core reasons why these migrant workers continue to work.
• The mindset with these working families is that one or two people will work like this (i.e. be a migrant worker) all their lives, until and unless supplemented or replaced by someone else. This is pretty much the norm with migrant worker families in Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, etc.

The reason all this sounds and looks very different to you is because of the way things are in different parts of the world. Sometimes you will have a tough time wrapping your mind across the issues and the way things are.

The five Bibles of remittances that do touch upon this subject can be read here: https://fkpost.squarespace.com/c...