OFW Families Now Considered Middle-Class

Nearly four in five Philippine families that benefit from money remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are now middle- and high-income families, which suggests that more funds may be flowing toward saving and investment than toward consumption, the International Monetary Fund said. The linkage between OFW remittances and investments in the Philippines remains weak, but that may change in the future, the IMF said in a March 2007 country report. “In the Philippines, the investment ratio has steadily declined since the Asian crisis, thus it is clear that the increase in remittances has not increased investment thus far,” the report said.

In 1991, it said, nearly 60 percent of families in the Philippines that considered their main income source as coming from abroad came from the bottom two quartiles (referring to four equal groups into which a population can be divided) based on income distribution. (The Philippine Daily Inquirer)