Of Income and Incomers (Financial Times)
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April 19, 2008
The Financial Times features CGD research fellow Michael Clemens' and non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett's research on migration. From the article: "Which nation produces the richest people in the world? You might think that an easy question to answer: just grab the latest figures from the International Monetary Fund, and you’ll see that the answer is Luxembourg ($102,000 gross domestic product per head in 2007). The US is in ninth place ($46,000) and the UK in 11th ($45,000)." There are some methodological wrinkles to iron out: what exchange rate to use, for instance. And for the poorest countries such as Liberia ($200 per person in 2007) or Burundi ($130), the numbers involve some guesswork. But overall, these are not controversial statistics – unless you are Lant Pritchett or Michael Clemens. Pritchett, of Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Clemens, of the Washington, DC, think-tank the Center for Global Development, argue that my opening question should be answered in a radically different way. Rather than measuring the income of people who are now residents of Liberia, Clemens and Pritchett have produced a research paper estimating the income earned by people who were born in, say, Liberia, regardless of where they now live – what Clemens and Pritchett call 'income per natural' of Liberians."
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