Countries with the Highest Remittances

The appearance of the western European countries is a bit surprising.

Yeah, they surprised me too.

Free movement in the EU, means that a lot of people choose to find higher paying jobs in places such as the UK. They often have English as a 2nd language taught from early on, so can earn much more than they potentially could in the same role in Ukraine for example.

Ukraine isn't in the EU. I expected countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria for the reason you mentioned - but they didn't show up. France and Spain did. That surprised me too.

Surprised France and Belgium make the list while some other European countries do not, and some other places like the USA, Malaysia, Sudan, Vietnam, Russia, Yemen... and I wonder how much money is made by expats and sent back that is off the books. Probably a ton in certain economies.

Is it possible the European countries might be cases of someone whose job is just across the border into the next country from where they live? I know that happens with people who work in different states here in the US, but I have no idea if that would happen in Europe or not.

Yes this is probably the case. Here in the UK there are a variety of people from all over Europe working in all kinds of jobs. Likely accounts for France, Ukraine etc.

This is a good point, as both France and Belgium are French speaking and border each other.

One of the more difficult quizzes to find the pattern of the answers. Got everything but Jordan, but towards the end I was just randomly typing in countries. Surprised Vietnam didn't make the list.

The pattern is countries that have a large diaspora working as expats in other countries, but at the same time don't have too many expats from other countries working in them.

Probably helps to have lived and worked in countries that are full of expats earning and remitting money home like the United States and Saudi Arabia. Then you would have run into people from almost all of these places.

If anything, I'm actually surprised that Bangladesh isn't higher on the list. Remittances are HUGE for South Asian countries... and yeah, I was also expecting Southeast Asian countries to follow a similar pattern so I was surprised only the Philippines and Indonesia made it

The difference between what I was expecting in this quiz and what was actually there was interesting. I was thinking of countries that were poor, but not so poor that people wouldn't be able to afford to leave. And with high populations. The top eight were therefore expected. But I thought that in richer countries like France and Belgium there would surely be more workers there sending remittances, not receiving them. Didn't consider many others because I thought they would have too low a population.

A really difficult quiz. I am surprised there was no Vietnam, Turkey or Brazil. In the last seconds I guessed Nepal.

Great quiz, thanks! Challenging and thought-provoking.

I'd imagine a large portion of the Dominican Republic's remittances come from baseball players.