Summary

'The Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008' attempts to present the numbers and facts behind the stories of international migration and remittances, drawing on authoritative, publicly available data. It provides a snapshot of statistics on immigration, emigration, skilled emigration, and remittance flows for 194 countries, and 13 regional and income groups. Some interesting facts from the Factbook:- Nearly 200 million people, or 3 percent of the world population, live outside their countries of birth. Current migration flows, relative to population, are weaker than those of the last decades of the nineteenth century.- The volume of South-South migration is almost as large as that of South-North migration.- International migration is dominated by voluntary migration, which is driven by economic factors. In 2005, refugees numbered only 13.5 million, or just over 7 percent of international migrants. The share of refugees in the population of low-income countries was more than five times larger than the share in high-income OECD countries.- Worldwide remittance flows are estimated to have exceeded $318 billion in 2007, of which developing countries received $240 billion. The true size, including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels, is believed to be significantly larger.