Emigration, Wage Inequality and Vanishing Sectors

Emigration leads to finite changes in structure of production and sectors vanish because they cannot pay higher wages. Does emigration of one type of labor hurt the other non-emigrating type in this set up? We demonstrate various scenarios when real income of the emigrating and the non-emigrating type do not move together and in the process generalize some of the existing results in the literature. In particular emigration can lead to a drastic change in the degree of inequality depending on which sectors survive in the post-emigration scenario.Skill; emigration; wages; inequality; reallocation.

Emigration, Wage Inequality and Vanishing Sectors

Emigration leads to finite changes in structure of production and sectors vanish because they cannot pay higher wages. Does emigration of one type of labour hurt the other non-emigrating type in this set up? We demonstrate various scenarios when real income of the emigrating and the non-emigrating type do not move together and in the process generalize some of the existing results in the literature. In particular emigration can lead to a drastic change in the degree of inequality depending on which sectors survive in the post-emigration scenario.Skill, emigration, wages, inequality, reallocation

The Emigration of Immigrants, Return vs. Onward Migration: Evidence from Sweden

Using data on registered emigration from Sweden from 1991-2000, this study analyzes emigration propensities for natives and immigrants delineating among immigrant emigrants between return and onward migration. Return migration is defined as migration back to source countries and onward migration as emigration to third country destinations. Onward migration constitutes an increasing proportion of emigration from Sweden and is the more common form of emigration among immigrants from Africa and Asia. Results indicate that emigrants in general are positively selected in terms of upper education, a result driven by the positive association between upper education and emigration among onward migrants. Predicted age-income profiles show that although emigrants in general have higher adjusted mean income levels, up to the age of 35-40, than non-emigrants, onward migrants have lower predicted income levels across the age distribution due to this groups relatively low employment levels in Sweden.Emigration; Return Migration; Onward Migration; Immigrant/Emigrant Earnings

Are Ethnic Minorities More Likely to Emigrate? Evidence from Latvia

Drawing on survey data on emigration intentions in Latvia, this paper studies emigration intentions of minorities. The paper shows, that after controlling for other factors, the probability of emigration of a Russian minority individual is higher than that of a majority individual. For Russian speakers, higher education and income levels are associated with higher probability of emigration. These findings can be explained by linguistic discrimination on the labour market and inefficient minority integration policies, such as minority education reform.Emigration, ethnic minorities, discrimination, Latvia, EU enlargement.

Internal Migration and Income Inequality in China: Evidence from Village Panel Data

Existing studies on the impact of migration on income inequality at sending communities suffer from severe methodology defects and data limitations. This paper analyzes the impact of rural-to-urban migration on inequality using a newly constructed panel dataset for around 100 villages over a ten-year period from 1997 to 2006 in China. To our best knowledge, this is the first paper that examines the dynamic aspects of migration and income inequality employing a dynamic panel data analysis. Unlike earlier studies focusing exclusively on remittances, our data include the total labor earnings of migrants in destination areas. Furthermore, we look at the gender dimension of the impact of migration on wage inequality within the sending communities. Since income inequality is time-persisting, we use a system GMM framework to control for the lagged income inequality in estimating the effect of emigration on income inequality in the sending villages. At the same time, contemporary emigration is validly instrumented in the GMM framework because of the unobserved time-varying community shock that correlates with emigration and income inequality, as well as with the potential reverse causality from income inequality to emigration. We found a Kuznets (inverse U-shaped) pattern between migration and income inequality in the sending communities. Specifically, contemporary emigration increases income inequality, while lagged emigration has strong income inequality-reducing effect in the sending villages. A 50-percent increase in the lagged emigration rate translates into one-sixth to one-seventh standard deviation reduction in inequality. Contemporary emigration has slightly smaller effects in raising the income inequality within villages. These effects are robust to the different specifications and different measures of inequality. More interestingly, the estimated relationship between emigration and the gender wage gap also has an inverse U-shaped pattern. Emigration tends to increase the gender wage gap initially, and then tends to decrease it in the sending villages.Internal Migration; Inequality; System GMM.

Emigration of Skilled Labor under Risk Aversion: The Case of Medical Doctors from Middle Eastern and North African Economies

This is a contribution to the new economics of skilled labor emigration that focuses on the mobility of medical doctors from sending Middle East and North African countries. Economic models under risk neutrality and aversion are used. The findings show that the relative expected benefits and the emigration rate have major effects on the net relative human medical capital that remains in the source country. The effects of relative wages in the destination and sending countries besides the yield of education are likely to change the emigration patterns. Comparisons of theoretical and observed relative human capital per country averages are conducted and ensured the statistical validity of the model. The empirical results based on the available data by Docquier and Marfouk (2006 and 2008) and Bhargava, Docquier and Moullan (2010) allowed further use of the model to understand the current trends in the emigration of medical doctors. These trends confirm the magnitude of relative wages besides the level of education and the attitude toward risk as determinants of the emigration of skilled labor. The countries included in the study are all exhibiting brain gain under 1991-2004 emigration data but two distinct groups of countries are identified. Each country is encouraged to anticipate the likely effects of this emigration on the economy with the increase of health demand, the domestic wages and the increase in education capacity for medical doctors.Medical skilled emigration; wages; human capital, risks.

The economic consequences of ‘brain drain’ of the best and brightest: Microeconomic evidence from five countries

Brain drain has long been a common concern for migrant-sending countries, particularly for small countries where high-skilled emigration rates are highest. However, while economic theory suggests a number of possible benefits, in addition to costs, from skilled emigration, the evidence base on many of these is very limited. Moreover, the lessons from case studies of benefits to China and India from skilled emigration may not be relevant to much smaller countries. This paper presents the results of innovative surveys which tracked academic high achievers from five countries to wherever they moved in the world in order to directly measure at the micro level the channels through which high-skilled emigration affects the sending country. The results show that there are very high levels of emigration and of return migration among the very highly skilled; the income gains to the best and brightest from migrating are very large, and an order of magnitude or more greater than any other effect; there are large benefits from migration in terms of postgraduate education; most high-skilled migrants from poorer countries send remittances; but that involvement in trade and foreign direct investment is a rare occurrence. There is considerable knowledge flow from both current and return migrants about job and study opportunities abroad, but little net knowledge sharing from current migrants to home country governments or businesses. Finally, the fiscal costs vary considerably across countries, and depend on the extent to which governments rely on progressive income taxation

Do Visas Kill? Health Effects of African Health Professional Emigration

The emigration of highly skilled workers can in theory lower social welfare in the migrant-sending country. If such workers produce a good whose consumption conveys a positive externality—such as nurses and doctors in a very poor country—the loss can be greater, and welfare can even decline globally. Policies to impede emigration thus have the potential to raise sending-country and global welfare. This study uses a new database of health worker emigration from Africa to test whether exogenous decreases in emigration raise the number of domestic health professionals, increase the mass availability of basic primary care, or improve a range of public health outcomes. It identifies the effect through two separate natural quasi-experiments arising from the colonial division of the African continent. These produce exogenous changes in emigration comparable to those that would result from different immigration policies in principal receiving countries. The results suggest that Africa's generally low staffing levels and poor public health conditions are the result of factors entirely unrelated to international movements of health professionals. A simple model proposes that such results would be explained by segmentation of health workforce labor markets in the sending countries. The results further suggest that emigration has caused a greater production of health workers in Africa.emigration, health professionals, visas, africa, highly skilled workers, public health

Emigration and Democracy

Migration is an important and yet neglected determinant of institutions. The paper documents the channels through which emigration affects home country institutions and considers dynamic-panel regressions for a large sample of developing countries. We find that emigration and human capital both increase democracy and economic freedom. This implies that unskilled (skilled) emigration has a positive (ambiguous) impact on institutional quality. Simulations show an impact of skilled emigration that is generally positive, significant for a few countries in the short run and for many countries in the long run once incentive effects of emigration on human capital formation are accounted for.Migration, Institutions, Democracy, Diaspora Effects, Brain Drain

Search Equilibrium with Migration: the Case of Poland

The EU enlargement has facilitated labour force movements between the former EU member countries and the accession countries. Foremost, the outflow of workers from the new member countries to countries which introduced open-door policy has magnified. The aim of the paper is to shed some light on the possible effects of reinforced emigration from Poland on its labour market. In particular, it focuses on the impact of the migration flows on wages. The wage equation derived from the search and matching model augmented with migration flows (emigration and the return migration) was estimated employing Bayesian inference. It allowed calculating an approximate magnitude of emigration of workers and describing the impact the labour movements should have had on the real wage in Poland. From 2002 to 2006 the number of temporary emigrants increased by roughly 4.5% of the Polish population whereas the resulting increase in the real wage was moderate and amounted to over 1%. The implied elasticity of wages to reduction of the workforce due to emigration between 2003 and 2006 was in the range of 0.2–0.3. Mediocre response of wages to emigration corresponds well with earlier studies on the impact of emigration on the source country wage rate. Yet, the explanation of the limited impact of emigration on wages lies in the adjustment of the demand for labour in the steady-state and substantial intensity of the return migration predominantly to employment found in the data.emigration, integration, labour market, EU enlargement