Income Disparities, Population and Migration Flows Over the Twenty First Century

Abstract

This paper provides worldwide projections of population, educational attainment, international migration and income for the twenty first century. We develop and parametrize a dynamic, stylized model of the world economy that accounts for interdependencies between socio-demographic and economic variables. Our baseline scenario is in line with the 'high-fertility' population prospects of the United Nations, assumes constant education and migration policies, long-run absolute convergence in total factor productivity (TFP) between emerging and high-income countries, and the absence of economic take-off in Africa. It predicts a rise in the income share of Asia (from 37 to 58% of the world income) and in the demographic share of Africa (from 10 to 29% of the world adult population). Over the twenty first century, the worldwide proportion of adult migrants will increase by less than 1% point (from 3.5 to 4.3%). Keeping its immigration policy unchanged, the 15 members of the European Union will see their average immigration rate increase from 7.4 to 18.2%. In Italy, the immigration pressure will increase fourfold. On the contrary, immigration rates will be fairly stable in the non-European, high-income countries. Then, we assess the This essay is a revised version of the paper prepared within the "Value Added in Motion (VAM)" project funded by the Enel Foundation. We thank Giorgio Barba Navaretti, Giovanni Facchini and Tommaso Frattini for helpful comments. Joël Machado also acknowledges financial support by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (9037210). Author's personal copy 126 F. Docquier, J. Machado sensitivity of our projections to changes in migration policies, TFP disparities, fertility and education. Large increases in the average European (and Italian) immigration rates are obtained under all the scenarios. More than ever, the management of immigration will represent a major societal challenge for European countries.

Global migration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the unstoppable force of demography

“…In line with Hanson and McIntosh ( 2016 ) or Docquier and Machado ( 2017 ), future migration pressures mainly affect European countries, and are mostly due to rising migration flows from developing countries. To illustrate this, we use the same Max-Sum Submatrix algorithm as in the previous section, and apply it to the matrix of total migration net flows from developing countries to the 27 members of the European Union between 2010 and 2060; projections for subsequent years are more uncertain and scenario-sensitive.…”

“… 4 A similar approach is used in Docquier and Machado ( 2017 ) who focus on 34 destination countries and consider non-official socio-demographic projections. Identifying assumptions are refined here thanks to the backcasting experiments, and richer technology and policy variants are considered.…”

Calibrating Long-Term Trade Baselines in General Equilibrium

“…However, with some exceptions (Duval & de la Maisonneuve, 2010;Johansson et al, 2012;Fouré et 6 al., 2013;Docquier & Machado, 2017), academic work in this area was sparse, leading to a lack of well-documented and economically-grounded projection models. This can be explained by the intrinsic uncertainties surrounding projections and by the focus on featuring multiproduct firm heterogeneity and quality ladders in endogenous growth models (Klette & Kortum, 2004;Akcigit & Kerr, 2018).…”

“…MIRAGE is fitted with the same projections in terms of population, education and labour force. We finally take on board the impact of migrations and the skill 4 level of migrants, and rely on projections by Docquier and Machado (2017) to calibrate our migration scenarios.…”

“…Interestingly, the latter exercise confirms the important impact of investment in education on trade. Slower educational upgrading in emerging 3 Docquier and Machado (2017) provide worldwide projections of population, educational attainment, international migration and income. Their baseline is in line with the 'high-fertility' population prospects of the UN.…”