Money and mobility : migration and remittances

In recent years, migration has increased rapidly and become a more prominent feature of the world economy and the public policy debate. According to the United Nations, there are estimated to be more than 200 million international migrants in 2010. Remittances, the money that the migrants send back to their home countries, reached an estimated $328 billion in 2008. This dissertation primarily focuses on processes and consequences of economic migration and more specifically of remittance sending/receiving. This dissertation focuses on the determinants of migration that prompt economic migrants to leave their countries of origin, on how remittances are currently empirically measured and on how migrants send remittances once they have decided to do so. Research was also done on the effect immigrant integration had on the remittance channel decision and on health care spending in the sending country.