Guatemala News

Guatemala. Survey Explores the Impact of the Financial Crisis on Children in Guatemala.

In a new Survey on Remittances 2009, Children and Adolescents, the eighth in this IOM-Guatemala series and jointly produced with UNICEF, confirms the negative impact of the financial crisis on children and adolescents in Guatemala.
The decline in remittances from family members abroad has forced tens of thousands of children to leave school and find work to supplement the family income.

Amongst the 3,000 households interviewed by IOM and UNICEF, 8.7 per cent of the children between 7 and 17 years-old can no longer attend school and 7.4 per cent or 92,905 children of the same age have been forced to find jobs to supplement the family income. "Forty-two per cent of these children were in school in 2008. This confirms the direct impact of the financial crisis on the choices families are making," explains Delbert Field, IOM Chief of Mission in Guatemala.

Survey respondents confirmed to IOM and UNICEF that migration had improved their quality of life. For many years the remittances received allowed children to stop working and attend school. Field adds: "The data from this latest survey can be a valuable tool when designing public policies to encourage the development potential of remittances, which will undoubtedly translate into better opportunities for children." According to the 2009 Remittance Survey, an estimated 1.6 million Guatemalans are living abroad; 70.5 per cent of them are men who send remittances home to 1,557,234 households in the country The average monthly remittance of US$272 is expected lead to US$ 3.84 billion worth of remittances in 2009, an 11 per cent decline from 2008.

But unemployment in the United States, where 97 per cent of Guatemalan migrants are living, is not deterring others from migrating. Responses indicate that 7.1 per cent plan to migrate in the next 12 months. Only 3.3 per cent of families interviewed confirmed that a family member had returned home this year and listed the main causes for return as deportation, the financial crisis, illness and retirement.

Seventy-two per cent of those surveyed characterized their economic situation between bad and fair. Many of these families have been forced to cut down the number of meals per day and the amount of calories consumed at each meal, which has lead to weight loss amongst infants aged between 7 and 23 months.

Source: OIM, UNICEF
A full copy of the report in Spanish is available online at http://www.oim.org.gt

Picture: Goverment of Guatemala Press Office 

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