It has often been said that the diaspora of developing countries possess considerable wealth that can be tapped – via issuance of diaspora bonds – for the origin countries’ development. We have just released a Migration and Development Brief where we present some preliminary estimates of the annual savings of the global diaspora from developing countries.
As outlined in chart 1, there are three broad elements to estimating savings of the diaspora from developing countries: (a) the size of the diaspora stocks in the different host countries, (b) the average income of the diaspora members, and (c) their propensity to save. However, lack of comparable data on migration and migrants’ income across host countries, the undocumented status of many migrants, and differences in the concepts used for income and savings across countries make this exercise especially challenging.
| Chart 1: Diaspora savings and potential market for Diaspora bonds. |
 |
| Click here to see a larger version of this chart. |