By SABRINA TAVERNESE


TOSH-TEPPA, Tajikistan - In povertystricken Tajikistan, the global financial crisis is measured in bags of flour.

At least that is how Bibisoro Sayidova sees it, as she looks for ways to feed her five children, since her husband, a migrant worker in Russia, stopped receiving his wages this fall. Now he is loading large sacks of dried fruit in Moscow on faith.

“Sometimes I cry when the kids don’t have socks or coats,”she said, mixing a stew of water, bread, onion and oil.“We’re still hoping he’ll get paid.”

The financial crisis that is in full swing in the world’s developed countries is only beginning to reach the poorest, and labor migrants, with feet in both worlds, are among the first to feel it.

Flows of migrant money to developing countries, known as remittances, began to slow this fall, the first moderation after years of double-digit growth, according to the World Bank. The slowdown is expected to turn into a decline of 1 to 5 percent in 2009, when the full effect of the crisis hits.

Some are already feeling it. Mexico, for example, is likely to have a 4 percent decline in the flows of migrant money in 2008, according to World Bank estimates. The biggest declines this year are expected in the Middle East and North Africa, because of economic slowdowns in the Persian Gulf and Europe.

“There’s definitely a serious moderation in the growth of remittances,”said Dilip Ratha, a senior economist at the World Bank who tracks migrant money flows.

Countries like Tajikistan have come to depend on remittances. The country will rank first in the world in 2008 for remittances as a portion of its economy - 54 percent - according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

“The Tajik economy is not sustainable without migration,”Mr.Ratha said.“It is not diversified. People are the most important resource they have.”

The reason dates to the Soviet collapse, when factories closed, subsidies from Moscow dried up and villages like Tosh-Teppa, 40 kilometers north of Afghanistan, were left to rot. More than 80 percent of the population lived under the poverty line of about $2 a day, and Tajiks began to export the only thing they had: themselves.

“The population has been completely abandoned by the state,”said Paul Quinn Judge, who runs the International Crisis Group’s Central Asian program.“When it comes to providing for basic needs - healthy drinking water, heat in winter - they are utterly failing.”

When oil profits were high, workers from Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe poured into Russian cities, as many as 10 million by some estimates, making Russia the country with the second largest immigrant population, after the United States.

But the trend of booming remittances has clearly ended. In Tajikistan, remittances rose just 1 percent in November, compared with the same month last year, according to the I.M.F., down sharply from a record growth of about 90 percent early this year.

That has brought a quiet desperation into households like Ms.Sayidova’s. The area is missing so many men that it feels like wartime, and its daily allowance of four to six hours of electricity is the same as in Baghdad. Malnutrition is widespread. Ms.Sayidova’s 13-year-old son has the body of a 6-year-old. The number of Tajikistan girls who graduate high school has fallen by 12 percent.

Still, migrants do not seem to be giving up and returning home. Instead, people interviewed recently said they would dig in further to hold on to any chance for a job.