Many studies have found that health outcomes decline when health professionals leave the country, but do such results remain consistent in gender- and income-disaggregated skilled migration? To help uncover explanations for such a pro-migration nature of health outcomes, the present study revisits this topic but allows for associations of skilled migration with mortality and life expectancy to differ between male and female, and between low- and high-income countries. Using a panel of 133 developing countries as source and 20 OECD countries as destination from 1980 to 2010 allowing the coefficient on emigration across different education levels to differ, the study finds the negative effect of high-skilled emigration on health outcomes. Such effect is more pronounced for high-skilled female migration than those for male and for low-income countries than for middle-and high-income countries. Results also show that such adverse effect is larger for African countries than non-African ones. However, the low-skilled migration appears to be insignificant to affect health outcomes in developing countries. Thus, skilled migration is detrimental to longevity in developing countries but unskilled migration is not.

This study conducts an empirical investigation of the effect of skilled migration on income inequality in the origin countries. Developing countries are low‐skilled labour abundant and high‐skilled labour scarce. Emigration of high‐skilled labour increases the relative supply of low‐skilled labour in the country. Excess supply of low‐skilled labour depresses the wage rate of these countries while the wage rate of the highly skilled increases leading, to the Gulf of inequality, at least in the short‐run. Complementarity between high‐skilled and low‐skilled labour could be another channel. Consequently, skilled migration is usually seen as inducing losses for the low‐skilled left behind. Using a panel of 110 developing countries from 1980‐2010, the study finds robust results to different econometrics specifications and subsamples that high‐skilled migration increases income inequality in the short‐run while there appears to be no effect of low‐skilled migration on inequality. A clearer understanding of the channels through which high‐skilled migration will be detrimental for income inequality in developing countries may assist policymakers to craft appropriate policies to curtail high‐skilled migration, which would serve to improve equality, hence reducing social and political unrest.

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This study explores the impact of trade on (i) migration by skill levels and (ii) migration by gender. To do so, we estimate different dynamic panel data models using stocks of migrants in OECD countries by educational attainment and gender from 1980 to 2010. We use imports, exports, and total trade as the main variables of interest and both external and internal instrumental variable approaches to address endogeneity issues. The results suggest that imports and total trade are positively associated with the stocks of high‐skilled migrants. Exports are negatively associated with the stocks of low‐skilled migrants. The associations are not significant for the medium‐skilled. These results can be explained by the fact that developing countries, abundant in low‐skilled labour, tend to export low‐skilled‐intensive goods and import high‐skilled intensive goods as in the Heckscher‐Ohlin model. Therefore, an increase in imports tends to decrease the reward of high‐skilled individuals (who are relatively scarce in developing countries), thus increasing their incentive to migrate. Vice versa, an increase in export tends to decrease low‐skilled migration. Finally, while comparing the migration effects of trade upon the skilled, we find a stronger positive impact of trade on high‐skilled female migration than that on high‐skilled male. A clearer understanding of the channels through which trade will be a determinant of skilled migration in developing countries may assist policymakers to craft an appropriate policy environment which enhances import substitution of skill‐intensive goods that would serve to discourage skilled emigration.

In the context of the current Presidential administration’s policy to reduce imports to the US and its restrictive attitudes toward immigration, it is relevant to investigate how imports and immigration are related. Existing studies have typically analyzed the effects of immigration on imports. But we wondered if the reverse causality could be worthy of examination. Thus, this study explores the impacts of trade policy on immigration. The first part discusses whether trade policies impact immigration, and the second part delves deeper into the heterogeneous effects of trade policies on high-skilled and low-skilled immigration. A large country’s restrictive import policies increase labor demand stemming from the increased demand for import substitution. Thus, workers in the exporting countries see a strong incentive to move to importing countries. Such restrictions also affect the propensity to immigrate of high and low-skilled workers differently. Net capital inflows increase because trade restrictions appear to decrease capital outflows to exporting countries in part by losing investors’ confidence. This increases the demand for high-skilled workers as capital complements them. Therefore, high-skilled workers are more migratory than those of low-skilled. Using a panel of 20 OECD countries for the period of 1980–2010 and an instrumental variable method, the results show that restricted trade policies increase immigration and that such policies have a stronger impact on the high-skilled immigration than those of low-skilled. A clearer understanding of the channels through which trade will be a determinant of skilled migration may assist policymakers to craft an appropriate policy environment that enhances import substitution of skill-intensive goods that would serve to discourage skilled emigration.

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