Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008

'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.