Emigration from the countries of Central America has evolved since the 1960s from small numbers of largely intra-regional emigrants to substantial numbers of people, emigrating in large part to the United States. For example, in 1960, 69 percent of emigrants from El Salvador resided in Honduras and only 12 percent lived in the United States. By 2000, 88 percent of Salvadoran emigrants in the world lived in the United States.

Central America is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to extreme climate events. The literature estimates the macroeconomic effects of climate events mainly using annual data, which might underestimate the true effects as these extreme events tend to be short-lived and generate government and family support in response. To overcome this limitation, this paper studies Central American countries’ macroeconomic impact of climatic disasters using high-frequency (monthly) data over the period 2000-2019. We identify extreme climate events by defining dummy variables related to storm and flood events reported in the EM-DAT (Emergency Events Database) and estimate country-specific VAR and panel VAR. The results suggest that a climatic disaster drops monthly economic activity in most countries in the region of around 0.5 to 1 percentage points on impact, with persistent effects on the level of GDP. We show that even as extreme climate events were relatively less severe under our sample period, quantitative effects are similar or larger than previously estimated for the region. In addition, remittances (transfers from family living abroad) increase for most countries in response to a extreme climate event, acting as a shock absorber. The results are robust to controlling for the severity of the climate events, for which we construct a monthly climate index measuring severity of weather indicators by following the spirit of the Actuaries Climate Index (ACI).

Migrants have long faced unwarranted constraints to sending money to family members and relatives in their home countries, among them costly fees and commissions, inconvenient formal banking hours, and inefficient domestic banking services that delay final payment to the beneficiaries. Yet such remittances are perhaps the largest source of external finance in developing countries. Officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries exceeded US$125 billion in 2004, making them the second largest source of development finance after foreign direct investment. This book demonstrates that governments in developing countries increasingly recognize the importance of remittance flows and are quickly addressing these constraints.

It is estimated that nearly one in seven people — more than 1 billion in total — are classified as migrants in national statistics. Of these, about 763 million are estimated to be internal migrants; the remaining 281 million are international migrants (International Organization for Migration 2021). Migration is an intrinsic part of the development process, representing one of the greatest opportunities to facilitate economic and social advancement in developing countries. Understanding how different types of individuals and households perceive these opportunities and overcome related constraints, and how these change over time, is of key interest. At the same time, migration presents one of the world’s biggest challenges, requiring adjustments by both sending and hosting communities, and understanding those adjustments is a priority. The CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) has undertaken more than 40 studies designed to explore the causes and consequences of internal and international migration. In aggregate, the studies help us understand what motivates people to migrate and what factors impinge on their ability to do so. These studies focused on the relationship of migration with rural transformation, gender, youth, climate change, and social protection and cut across the whole PIM research portfolio. This brief synthesizes findings from this research in an attempt to present a more complete picture. While there is a vast literature on migration external to PIM and CGIAR, the results of the PIM investiga­tions constitute valuable inputs into national pol­icies and programs designed to foster economic and social development while maximizing the benefits and reducing the risks of migration.

The Many Faces of Global Migration report is an introduction to what Gallup has unearthed by asking migrants and potential migrants worldwide about their lives. The data presented in this report are based on Gallup’s ongoing World Poll surveys in more than 150 countries, territories and regions and more than 750,000 interviews since 2005. As such, these findings provide an unprecedented look at the different push-and-pull factors that influence migration, the experiences of those who desire to migrate to other countries permanently or temporarily for work, those who are planning to go, those who are preparing to go, those who have already left, and those who have returned home – and what this means for governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders.