Remittances

With research conducted both in the United States and in Latin America, the Center explores the massive flow of dollars that links Hispanic immigrants with their families back home. Various studies have examined the types of people who send and those who receive remittances. In addition the Center has focused attention on the market for remittance transfer services, assessing how immigrants chose those services and how the market has responded to growing demand.

Related Publications

1.8.2009
Hispanics and the Economic Downturn: Housing Woes and Remittance Cuts
Like the U.S. population as a whole, Latinos are feeling the sting of the recession. Almost one-in-ten (9%) Latino homeowners say they missed a mortgage payment or were unable to make a full payment and 3% say they received a foreclosure notice in the past year, a new Pew Hispanic Center survey finds. Some 36% say they are worried that their own home may go into foreclosure. The recession has also seen a decline in the amount of money that Hispanic immigrants sent in the past year to relatives or others in their country of origin.

6.7.2004
The Remittance Marketplace: Prices, Policy and Financial Institutions
Research by the Pew Hispanic Center points to difficulties in achieving further price reductions; limited penetration of the market by financial institutions. On the eve of the annual summit meeting of the world's leading industrialized nations, the Pew Hispanic Center released a detailed evaluation of how much it costs for immigrants to send money back home to their families in Latin America.

11.24.2003
Remittance Senders And Receivers: Tracking The Transnational Channels
Across the United States some six million immigrants from Latin America now send money to their families back home on a regular basis. The number of senders and the sums they dispatched grew even when the U.S. economy slowed, and looking to the future, the growth seems likely to continue and potentially to accelerate. The total remittance flow from the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean could come close to $30 billion this year, making it by far the largest single remittance channel in the world.

11.22.2002
Billions In Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances And Banking
Central banks across the region are tracking remittance income more carefully which has somewhat boosted the numbers they report. Nonetheless, there seems little doubt that the remittance flow has continued to increase over the past two years even as the U.S. economy dropped from its boom time peaks. In 2000 remittances to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua--nations that receive almost all their money transfers from the United States--totaled some $10.2 billion. This year that figure could reach $14.2 billion or more, a flow of $39 million a day. By 2005 the sum, which does not capture all remittances to Latin America, will go beyond $18 billion, according to projections by the Pew Hispanic Center.