Migration Intelligence · प्रवास
The ones who leave.
One Nepali in thirteen is recorded abroad, but the true number is far higher. Their money carries nearly a third of the economy; nearly four of them die there every day. This page holds the whole picture, district by district, every number from the official record.
Our reading of the numbers
The census records 2,190,592 Nepalis abroad, one in thirteen. We treat that as a floor, not the full count. It captures citizens reported absent at census time, but not the open Indian border, undocumented workers, or people of Nepali origin settled overseas. Two facts point the same way: about 2,300 leave for foreign work every day, and remittances equal nearly a third of the economy, one of the highest ratios on earth. Credible diaspora estimates put the real number at 6 to 8 million, close to a fifth of the population. Where the official record and the lived reality diverge, we show both and say which is which.
Sources: Nepal Census 2021 · Department of Foreign Employment · Nepal Rastra Bank (FY 2024/25) · IOM diaspora mapping
District by district
Where Nepal empties from
Every district, coloured by the share of its people recorded abroad in the 2021 census. The 77-district total reproduces the official national figure exactly.
Hover or tap any district. Colour shows the share of that district’s people recorded abroad by the 2021 census.
Highest share abroad
Lowest share abroad
The districts with the fewest people abroad are Karnali’s mountains, which are also Nepal’s most deprived. Migration takes money; the poorest districts cannot afford to send anyone.
NSO census API (censusapi.cbs.gov.np), NPHC 2021; 77-district sum reproduces the official national total 2,190,592 exactly; Kanchanpur share matches the NSO International Migration thematic report (12.9%)
Where they go
The destinations
Labour approvals by country, FY 2023/24 (DoFE). The Gulf and Malaysia take four of every five workers.
India is the invisible destination: 587,510 Nepalis worked there at the census, and the Living Standards Survey estimates over one million. The open border means no permits, no tracking, and no death compensation. Both figures are official undercounts.
The cost abroad
Nearly four coffins a day
Where they died · FY 2023/24
What killed them · since 2008
FEB records count only deaths for which families claimed compensation; deaths in India and unclaimed deaths are not counted.A fifth of all deaths are certified only as “natural causes”, without elaboration.
Source: Foreign Employment Board / FEWIMS, MoLESS Nepal Labour Migration Report 2024, Tables 4.1, 4.2, 4.4. NPR 699.91 million paid to families of 1,346 deceased in FY 2023/24; NPR 194.39 million to 653 injured.
The cost at home
Deaths on Nepal's roads
Around two and a half thousand deaths are recorded by Nepal Police every year. The WHO models roughly eight thousand. Both numbers are shown; the gap itself is a finding.
2019/20
2020/21
2021/22
2022/23
2023/24
2024/25
~8,000
WHO-modelled annual deaths (28.2 per 100,000, 2021) against ~2,400 police-recorded. The 3 to 4 times gap is unexplained by any official body.
68%
of road casualties involve two-wheelers (Demographic and Health Survey 2022). Over-speeding is the leading recorded cause of accidents.
Madhesh
records the most road deaths of any province over five years (2,604) — highways, pedestrians, two-wheelers. Kathmandu leads in accidents, not deaths.
Nepal Police Headquarters / Crime Investigation Department records, via The Rising Nepal (Apr 2024), Kathmandu Post (Jan 2025), Nepalnews (2025). Suicide at home, for scale: 7,221 deaths in FY 2023/24 alone (Nepal Police Annual Factsheet on Suicide, FY 2080/81 (official PDF)).
Who is deprived
Deprivation, province by province
The share of people multidimensionally poor (NPC/OPHI, NMICS 2019). No official district-level index exists; where the state has not measured, we say so rather than estimate.
The Karnali trap:Nepal’s poorest province (39.5% deprived) also sends the fewest people abroad. Migration is an escape that costs money — recruitment fees, tickets, training. The most deprived districts are locked out of the very remittance economy that carries everyone else.
Nepal Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, National Planning Commission with OPHI, UNDP and UNICEF, Table 3.3. National: 17.4% poor (approx 4.98 million), down from 30.1 percent in 2014.
What comes back
Rs 1,723.27 billion a year
USD 12.64 billion flowed home in FY 2024/25, growing 19.2% in a year. At 28.6% of GDP, Nepal has the fourth-highest remittance dependence in the world. Every district’s absent sons and daughters, shown on the map above, are also its largest export industry — the state publishes no district-level remittance ledger, so the census absentee count is the honest proxy for each district’s contribution.
Nepal Rastra Bank, Current Macroeconomic and Financial Situation (Annual 2024/25)
Sources and honesty.Census figures are from the National Statistics Office (NPHC 2021); the district table was drawn from the NSO census API and its 77-district sum reproduces the official national total exactly. Permits and deaths are from the Department of Foreign Employment and the Foreign Employment Board via the Nepal Labour Migration Report 2024; death records count only compensated cases and therefore understate the truth. Road and suicide data are Nepal Police; the WHO’s far higher road-death model is shown alongside, never averaged. Deprivation is the NPC/OPHI national MPI. Where no official series exists — district-level deprivation, district remittances, a consolidated accidental-deaths factsheet — this page says so. See how Nepal Next works.