By 2032, remittances will still be a bigger lifeline than official aid for many low- and middle-income countries

Prediction: by 2032, money sent home by migrants will remain larger than official development aid for many low- and middle-income countries, and will stay a major source of external income for them.

Reasoning: remittances are driven by millions of individual decisions by workers abroad supporting families, which makes them steadier and harder to reduce by policy than government aid budgets. A remittance is money sent by a person working abroad to relatives at home. Aid, by contrast, depends on donor governments' budgets and priorities, which change.

Confidence: fairly high, about 70 percent, for the general pattern. Individual countries will differ widely, and the figures for any one country can swing with economic conditions in host countries.

What would prove us wrong: if aid flows overtake remittances for most countries in this group, or if remittances fall sharply because of a long economic downturn or policy changes in major host countries.

How to check: compare remittance inflows and official aid for the same set of countries in published World Bank data.