Longing for the Good Life: Understanding Emigration from a High-Income Country

The outline of this article is as follows. First, we provide information on trends in emigration from highly developed countries. We review salient aspects of Dutch emigration history to provide a broader context for the extraordinary nature of today’s upsurge in emigration. We describe the theoretical background, data, measures of concepts, and statistical methodology. We conduct empirical analyses of potential migrants’ evaluation of public goods and their impact on intentions to migrate. We conclude with remarks about the emigration of talented citizens from industrialized countries and possible public policy responses