Migration and development: Dissecting the anatomy of the mobility transition

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Emigration first increases before decreasing with economic development. This bell-shaped relationship between emigration and development was first hypothesized by the theory of the mobility transition (Zelinsky, 1971). Although several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the upward segment of the curve (the most common being the existence of financial constraints), they have not been examined in a systematic way. In this paper, we develop a novel migration accounting methodology and use it to quantify the main drivers of the mobility transition curve. Our analysis distinguishes between migration aspirations and realization rates of college-educated and less educated individuals at the bilateral level. Between onethird and one-half of the slope of the increasing segment is due to the changing skill composition of working-age populations, and another third is due to changing network size. The microeconomic channel (including financial incentives and constraints) only accounts for one fourth of the total effect in low-income countries, and for less than one fifth in lowermiddle-income countries. Finally, our methodology sheds light on the microfoundations of migration decisions. JEL Classification:F22, O15

Economic Links between Education and Migration: An Overview

“…A general conclusion of these observations would be that "the migration transition is a process of generations" (p.9). Dao et al (2018) confirm the general (short to medium term) perception that migration increases with development, underpinning it with the increasing proportion of college graduates in the native population which is the group that has the highest propensity to emigrate abroad. (Figure 3).…”

High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration

“…Our primary dataset comprises 29 OECD destinations and 194 origins. 6 The emigration rates of college-educated individuals are always greater than their lesser-educated compatriots across all countries and at every level of development (as measured by per capita incomes), as shown non-parametrically by Dao et al (2016). There are several reasons behind this pattern.…”

Who’s About to Leave? A Global Survey of Aspirations and Intentions to Migrate

“…Aspirations and intentions to migrate have been analysed from both qualitative and quantitative angles (Docquier et al, ; Thulin and Vilhelmson, ; Gubert and Senne, ; Van Hear et al, ; Carling and Schewel, ; Carling and Collins, ; Dao et al, ; Williams et al, ). Many quantitative studies have tapped into the Gallup World Poll (among others, see Esipova et al, ; Docquier et al, ; Esipova et al, ; Cai et al, ; Bertoli and Ruyssen, ; Dao et al, ; Tjaden et al, ), but other examples have focused on, e.g. Latinobarometro, Arab Barometer (Graham and Markowitz, ; Falco and Rotondi, ), or ad hoc surveys (van Dalen, Groenewold, and Fokkema, ; van Dalen, Groenewold, and Schoorl, ; Williams et al, ).…”

“…Another aspect that deserves consideration is that most of these studies rely on a single survey question to measure the aspiration and/or intention to migrate (for instance, see Docquier et al, ; Dao et al, ), understood as the possibility of an individual to leave the country in which he or she is living in when the survey is rolled out. As any other survey items, their validity and reliability as measurement can be debated (Burnham et al, , pp.…”

“…Having aggregated countries by income level and geographical areas, this article estimates the likely factors associated with individual aspirations and intentions to migrate. Based on the academic literature, the article focuses on two sets of such factors: first, individual demographic characteristics and socio‐economic conditions (van Dalen, Groenewold, and Schoorl, ; Docquier et al, ; Dao et al, ; Bertoli and Ruyssen, ); and, second, subjective well‐being (Graham and Markowitz, ; Chindarkar, ).…”