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NPR ran a story this Sunday (May 24) about how cash-strapped immigrants in the United States are sometimes relying on their family abroad because of the recession - with money flowing in the reverse direction than the traditional remittance flow from the United States to poorer countries (see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104102126 to hear the story and for the transcript).

The NPR story draws on this blog post. It explains the reasons why it is so difficult to measure these reverse flows and finds that an indirect measure, the drawdown of savings deposits by migrants has been minuscule compared to the size of remittance inflows.