Remittances – First Results of a New Survey

Abstract

With the surge in emigration, the level of support provided by Hungarians living and working abroad to the households remaining in the home country has come to the foreground both in Hungarian public discourse and scientific research. For the most part, the research focuses on the contribution of remittances to the economy of developing countries, and only a few studies address the role of these funds in the context of migration processes within the European Union. In the course of 2017, in cooperation with the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank conducted a survey on this subject under the title "Family Assistance". For the first time, as a supplement to macrostatistics-based estimates this survey provides an opportunity to glean information about the underlying factors of remittances and about the characteristics of the senders as well as the receiving households. Initial results indicate, among other things, that around one fifth of emigrants and more than 65,000 households in Hungary are affected by the phenomenon, and support from abroad is an important source of income for a significant portion of households.