Click here to read Migrants Count: Five Steps Toward Better Migration Data
Background and Purpose
We know quite a lot about how the various dimensions of richer advanced countries' policies affect poorer developing countries, either directly or indirectly. We know, for example, that if rich countries fully opened their markets to products from poor countries, the value in increased income for those poor countries would be almost double that of development assistance. We know that rich country foreign direct investment flows provide jobs, help create local industries, and transfer technologies. But, what about the movement of people? How do rich country immigration policies affect developing countries? Do they impact only those who move? Or, do they also affect the sending countries? The sad and surprising answer is that we don't know, and, so long as we don't know, rich countries cannot claim to have the information they need to make sensible development policies.
CGD is committed to understanding how the policies of rich countries affect the welfare and development prospects of poorer countries. Our work and the work of others suggests that rich countries' immigration policies have huge impacts on the lives of immigrants who move from developing to rich countries. We also know that immigration affects the lives of those left behind, with the massive increases in remittances in the past two decades the most visible manifestation of this. But there are other, less visible benefits of immigration that may be far more important to the welfare of sending countries than remittances. But, while we can cite anecdotes in support of these effects, we know almost nothing about their magnitudes. And without that, we cannot know how important immigration policy is as development policy.
To push the issue of better migration statistics, CGD convened the Migration Data for Development Commission to explore one key question: As the international migration debate heats up, what do policy makers need to know about the impact of migration on sending countries if they care about development? (Read the Migration Data Commission background note.) As an obvious corollary to this question the group will as well explore the current state of migration statistics, and what needs to be done to give researchers and policy makers the empirical base they need to assess migration's impact on sending countries. A forthcoming report from the commission will summarize its main conclusions and recommendations.
The group's policy impact will be measured by whether or not the OECD and/or other national and international statistical agencies take initial steps to improve the quality of international migration data, steps that would ideally include instituting routine collection of information on entries and exits that would permit "adding up" of the flows of people across countries (as is the case for trade in goods and services), including standardized definitions of "temporary" versus "permanent" migrants, as well as of major skill and labor categories. Basic measures of this type are an essential starting point for rigorous empirical research on the development effects of migration.
Leadership and Composition
The Migration Data for Development Commission is co-chaired by
- Professor Lawrence Summers, former chief economist at the World Bank and president of Harvard University
- Patricia Santo-Tomas, chair of the Development Bank of the Philippines
Commissioners include 14 other distinguished experts from a variety of international and academic organizations conducting migration research:
- Nancy Birdsall, Center for Global Development
- Richard Bilsborrow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Michael Clemens, Center for Global Development
- Gero Carletto, World Bank
- Dennis de Tray, Center for Global Development
- Enrico Giovannini, OECD
- Michel Glaude, Eurostat
- Béla Hovy, United Nations
- Frank Laczko, International Organization for Migration
- Douglas Massey, Princeton University
- David McKenzie, World Bank
- Milena Novy-Marx, MacArthur Foundation
- Michel Poulain, Université Catholique de Louvain
- Hania Zlotnik, United Nations
Members serve in a personal capacity and on a voluntary basis.
Newest
Popular
Experts
Publications
Events
Multimedia
-
Abstract: A large literature examines the occupational mobility of immigrants and the potential underuse of their human capital in destination countries. Immigrants typically experience a U-shape pattern of occupational change, from their last job in the origin country to their first and then subsequent jobs in the destination country. Many never re-attain the same occupational status of their last job in the origin country. Yet such studies may understate the occupational cost of migrating since the last job in the origin country is not the correct counterfactual; immigrants may have experienced occupational change even if they had never migrated. In this paper, we use a migration lottery to see if bias results from use of this counterfactual. A unique longitudinal survey designed by the authors compares occupational change for migrants who enter New Zealand through a random ballot with occupational change for similar workers in the home country of Tonga who were unsuccessful participants in the same ballots. (Joint work with David McKenzie and Steven Stillman)
-
In this TED Talk-style presentation, CGD research fellow Michael Clemens exhibits his new research on the benefits of global migration.
-
The emigration of skilled workers from developing countries is often referred to as brain drain and considered something that should be limited. In this paper, resident fellow Michael Clemens takes the term to task and shows instead that a more open skill flow—a more accurate and neutral label—would both benefit home countries and guarantee workers the freedom that is the hallmark of development.
-
This video contains highlights from a recent event hosted at CGD, Beyond the Fence, where experts presented groundbreaking insights into the links between migration, remittances and prosperity.
-
CGD visiting fellow John Gibson and David McKenzie investigate the economic determinants behind decisions to migrate and decisions to return home. Using Pacific island countries as case studies, they find that expected gains in income may not be as influential as other expectations and preferences.
-
In this CGD report, the Commission on International Migration Data for Development Research and Policy presents their five recommendations to remedy the lack of good data on migration and its effects on development. The recommendations are politically and technically practical and would allow countries to greatly improve their migration data at low cost, and with existing mechanisms. The first step: ask basic census questions and make the data publicly available.
-
The World Bank's David McKenzie presents research on "brain drain" with remarks from CGD research fellow Michael Clemens.
-
The New Ideas in Development After the Financial Crisis Conference, sponsored by CGD and the Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism, examined the implications of the global financial crisis on existing development strategies.
In this audio recording, CGD research fellow Michael Clemens presents his new ideas for migration.
-
Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.
-
We exploit quasi-random variation in hydro-power generation and transmission in Brazil in order to isolate of the causal effects of electricity grid expansion on changes in population density and GDP. Since hydro-power generation requires intercepting water at high velocity, there is a random component to households’ access to electricity in a country that relies heavily on hydro-power, as that access depends on the household’s proximity to rivers with a gradient suitable for hydro-electricity generation. This allows isolation of the causal component of the relationship between electrification and development outcomes. The most plausible interpretation of our findings is that local access to electricity does not cause increases in population density, but does cause increases in GDP per capita by raising worker productivity.
-
This controversial book argues that irresistible demographic forces for greater international labor mobility are being checked by immovable anti-immigration ideas of rich-country citizens. Pritchett proposes breaking the gridlock through policies that support development while also being politically acceptable in rich countries. These include greater use of temporary worker permits, permit rationing, reliance on bilateral rather than multilateral agreements, and protection of migrants' fundamental human rights.
-
Data on the average income of a resident of Ecuador is easy to find. But until now there has been no data on the average income of a person born in Ecuador, regardless of where she or he lives. In this paper, research fellow Michael Clemens and non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett introduce a new dataset, income per natural: the mean annual income of persons born in a given country regardless of residence. Turns out that defining things this way makes a big difference, and not just for tiny nations. Income per natural differs by more than 10% from income per resident for dozens of countries including Vietnam, Kenya and Morocco. In other words, one of the largest sources of increased income for people in many parts of the developing world is moving to another country.
Learn More
-
Large numbers of African nurses and doctors are emigrating to the U.S., U.K., Australia and other rich countries. These movements strain local health systems and deprive sick people of urgently needed care. Right? Think again. What if wages and working conditions in city slums and rural villages are so dismal that trained health workers are unwilling to work there, regardless of migration options? What if the possibility of migration actually causes more people in developing countries to train as health care workers? Drawing on a new database of health worker emigration from Africa, CGD research fellow Michael Clemens finds that the conventional wisdom about the impact of doctors and nurses migration is entirely wrong. Visas, he concludes, do not kill. Learn more
-
Are your wages determined by what you know, or where you are? This paper estimates how the wages of workers in 42 developing countries would change if the same people could work in the United States. It uses a rich new database on over two million workers around the world. A worker from the median country would earn about 2.7 times as much in the US as at home. This means that (1) for many countries, the wage gaps caused by barriers to movement across international borders are among the largest known forms of wage discrimination; (2) these gaps represent one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; and (3) simply allowing labor mobility can reduce a given household’s poverty to a much greater degree than most known antipoverty interventions inside developing countries.
-
In this CGD report, the Commission on International Migration Data for Development Research and Policy presents their five recommendations to remedy the lack of good data on migration and its effects on development. The recommendations are politically and technically practical and would allow countries to greatly improve their migration data at low cost, and with existing mechanisms. The first step: ask basic census questions and make the data publicly available.
-
A CGD best-seller, Give Us Your Best and Brightest has been praised in Foreign Affairs as "a judicious combination of facts, theory, and informed conjecture on a growing but complex phenomenon about which too little is known." Best and Brightest addresses the migration of well-educated workers from poor to rich countries, and the implications of such migration for development. "The book makes insightful contributions to the literature," says Development Policy Review.
Learn more
-
Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.
-
The migration of doctors and nurses from Africa to rich countries has raised fears of an African medical brain drain. Research on the issue has been hampered by lack of data. How many doctors and nurses have left Africa? Which countries did they leave? Where have they settled? To answer these questions, CGD researchers compiled the first dataset of cumulative bilateral net flows of African-born physicians and nurses to the nine most important destination countries. Learn more
-
The emigration of skilled workers from developing countries is often referred to as brain drain and considered something that should be limited. In this paper, resident fellow Michael Clemens takes the term to task and shows instead that a more open skill flow—a more accurate and neutral label—would both benefit home countries and guarantee workers the freedom that is the hallmark of development.
-
International migration has long been a central tool in the battle against global poverty and inequality, but the recent heated political debate over immigration reform has largely failed to recognize how migration shapes the development process. In this essay, research fellow Michael Clemens and co-author Sami Bazzi outline five major reasons why migration is a development issue in today’s world, and they suggest an agenda for the next U.S. administration to make U.S. migration policy work for the United States, for countries of origin, and for the migrants themselves.
-
Nancy Birdsall, President An internationally recognized expert on the impact of rich-country policies on poor people in developing countries, Nancy Birdsall is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and over 100 articles in scholarly journals and monographs, published in English and Spanish. Her most recent book is Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Foreign Aid.
-
Michael Clemens, Research Fellow Research Fellow Michael Clemens leads CGD’s Migration and Development initiative. This work investigates how rich countries’ regulation of international movement by people from poor countries shapes the lives of the people who move as well as those who do not.
-
Devesh Kapur, Non-Resident Fellow Devesh Kapur is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Study of India, he holds the Madan Lal Sobti Professorship for the Study of Contemporary India, and he is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research examines local-global linkages in political and economic change in developing countries, particularly India. He also focuses on the role of international institutions and diasporas in development. He is the co-author, with John McHale, of Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World.
-
Michael Kremer, Non-Resident Fellow Michael Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the department of economics at Harvard University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. Kremer’s recent research examines education and health in developing countries, immigration, and globalization.
-
Lant Pritchett, Non-Resident Fellow Lant Pritchett is professor of the Practice of International Development and faculty chair of the Masters in Public Policy in International Development program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Prior to returning the Kennedy School, he was lead socio-economist in the social development group of the South Asia region of the World Bank, resident in Delhi, 2004–2007.
-
-
-
Migrants Count: Five Steps Toward Better Migration Data
- May 25, 2009
In this CGD report, the Commission on International Migration Data for Development Research and Policy presents their five recommendations to remedy the lack of good data on migration and its effects on development. The recommendations are politically and technically practical and would allow countries to greatly improve their migration data at low cost, and with existing mechanisms. The first step: ask basic census questions and make the data publicly available.
-
Skilled Emigration and Skill Creation: A quasi-experiment - Working Paper 152
- Sep 30, 2008
Does the emigration of highly educated people necessarily deplete skills in developing countries through a brain drain? Maybe not. In Fiji, according to a new CGD working paper by Satish Chand and CGD research fellow Michael Clemens, the sudden and massive departure of people with higher education not only raised investment in tertiary education but also increased the number of well-educated people inside Fiji, even after subtracting those who had left.
LEARN MORE
-
Don't Close the Golden Door: Making Immigration Policy Work for Development (White House and the World Policy Brief)
- Aug 22, 2008
International movements of people can spark and sustain the development process in poor countries, helping people climb out of poverty. Creating opportunities for poor people to improve their lives promotes our values, enhances our security,and restores our faltering image abroad. The next president of the United States has an opportunity to advance a migration
agenda that is one of several pillars of our leadership position on global development. CGD research fellow Michael Clemens shows how.
-
The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers across the U.S. Border - Working Paper 148
- Jul 3, 2008
Are your wages determined by what you know, or where you are? This paper estimates how the wages of workers in 42 developing countries would change if the same people could work in the United States. It uses a rich new database on over two million workers around the world. A worker from the median country would earn about 2.7 times as much in the US as at home. This means that (1) for many countries, the wage gaps caused by barriers to movement across international borders are among the largest known forms of wage discrimination; (2) these gaps represent one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; and (3) simply allowing labor mobility can reduce a given household’s poverty to a much greater degree than most known antipoverty interventions inside developing countries.
-
Don't Close the Golden Door: Our Noisy Debate on Immigration and Its Deathly Silence on Development
- May 27, 2008
International migration has long been a central tool in the battle against global poverty and inequality, but the recent heated political debate over immigration reform has largely failed to recognize how migration shapes the development process. In this essay, research fellow Michael Clemens and co-author Sami Bazzi outline five major reasons why migration is a development issue in today’s world, and they suggest an agenda for the next U.S. administration to make U.S. migration policy work for the United States, for countries of origin, and for the migrants themselves.
-
Income per Natural: Measuring Development as if People Mattered More Than Places - Working Paper 143
- Mar 13, 2008
Data on the average income of a resident of Ecuador is easy to find. But until now there has been no data on the average income of a person born in Ecuador, regardless of where she or he lives. In this paper, research fellow Michael Clemens and non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett introduce a new dataset, income per natural: the mean annual income of persons born in a given country regardless of residence. Turns out that defining things this way makes a big difference, and not just for tiny nations. Income per natural differs by more than 10% from income per resident for dozens of countries including Vietnam, Kenya and Morocco. In other words, one of the largest sources of increased income for people in many parts of the developing world is moving to another country.
Learn More
-
Bilateral Guest Worker Agreements: A win-win solution for rich countries and poor people in the developing world
- Apr 25, 2007
Increased labor mobility offers potentially huge gains for the developing and developed world, but migration is massively unpopular in rich countries. In this CGD Brief, non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett lays out a solution that is beneficial to poor people and potentially politically acceptable to rich country voters: temporary legal work programs negotiated bilaterally, with rich countries certifying labor shortages in specific industries and labor-sending countries ensuring that temporary workers return home. On Thursday, May 17th Lant will answer your questions live online at Ask CGD. Submit a question nowLearn more
-
Pathways Out of Poverty During an Economic Crisis: An Empirical Assessment of Rural Indonesia - Working Paper 115
- Mar 14, 2007
How do people escape poverty? In this working paper, CGD senior fellow Peter Timmer and his co-authors describe pathways out of poverty in Indonesia from 1993 to 2000, a period of economic and political turmoil. They find that most rural poor people who escaped poverty did so without moving to cities. From this experience they distill three policy recommendations: boost agricultural productivity, improve the investment climate for the rural non-agricultural sector, and make education a cornerstone of the government anti-poverty strategy. Learn more
-
Is the Occupational Cost of Migration Understated? Evidence from a Migration Lottery
- Jan 8, 2010
Abstract: A large literature examines the occupational mobility of immigrants and the potential underuse of their human capital in destination countries. Immigrants typically experience a U-shape pattern of occupational change, from their last job in the origin country to their first and then subsequent jobs in the destination country. Many never re-attain the same occupational status of their last job in the origin country. Yet such studies may understate the occupational cost of migrating since the last job in the origin country is not the correct counterfactual; immigrants may have experienced occupational change even if they had never migrated. In this paper, we use a migration lottery to see if bias results from use of this counterfactual. A unique longitudinal survey designed by the authors compares occupational change for migrants who enter New Zealand through a random ballot with occupational change for similar workers in the home country of Tonga who were unsuccessful participants in the same ballots. (Joint work with David McKenzie and Steven Stillman)
-
Development Effects of Electricity: Evidence from the Geologic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil
- Oct 21, 2008
We exploit quasi-random variation in hydro-power generation and transmission in Brazil in order to isolate of the causal effects of electricity grid expansion on changes in population density and GDP. Since hydro-power generation requires intercepting water at high velocity, there is a random component to households’ access to electricity in a country that relies heavily on hydro-power, as that access depends on the household’s proximity to rivers with a gradient suitable for hydro-electricity generation. This allows isolation of the causal component of the relationship between electrification and development outcomes. The most plausible interpretation of our findings is that local access to electricity does not cause increases in population density, but does cause increases in GDP per capita by raising worker productivity.
-
-
Mobilizing Talent for Global Development
- Apr 2, 2008
The economic potential of globalization may ultimately depend on the international mobility of highly talented individuals who transfer and circulate knowledge and skills. Examples are seen throughout the globe of these skilled individuals utilizing ideas, capital and innovation to contribute to new technologies and business creation, both in their own countries and abroad. In today's globalized economy, the concept of "brain drain" is given a fresh look when highlighting the positive impacts of talent mobility on development.
On April 2, Global Economy and Development at Brookings will host the release of a new publication, The International Mobility of Talent Types, Causes, and Development Impact Track (Oxford University Press, 2008), in coordination with the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University. Panelists will discuss the main determinants and development impact of talent mobility and how there is much to gain within the global economy if it is effectively managed. Experts include: Andres Solimano, AnnaLee Saxenian, Michael Clemens and Danny Leipziger. Brookings Nonresident Fellow Neil G. Ruiz will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion.
After the program, panelists will take audience questions. At the conclusion of the event there will be a reception in the Somers Room.
-
The International Migration of Women: Future Directions for Research and Policy
- Dec 18, 2007
The current share of women in the world's international migrant population is close to one half. Despite the great number of female migrants, there has until recently been a striking lack of gender analysis in the economic literature on international migration and development. A book just published by the World Bank, The International Migration of Women, provides six new studies focusing on the nexus between gender, international migration and economic development. The researchers responsible for the book will present some of the book's main findings and their policy implications, as well as highlighting several research questions that remain open.
-
How Much Do Low-Income Workers Gain from Migrating to a Rich Country? Experimental vs. Non-experimental Measures Using the New Zealand Visa Lottery
- Oct 17, 2006
Accurate measurement of the effect of migration on the income of potential migrants is a crucial factor in determining the impact that lowering barriers to migration would have on world income. However, measuring this effect is complicated by non-random selection of migrants from the general population, which makes it hard to obtain an appropriate comparison group of non-migrants. This paper uses a migrant lottery to experimentally estimate the income gains from migration, thus overcoming this problem. New Zealand allows a quota of Tongans to immigrate each year with a lottery used to choose amongst the excess number of applicants. A unique survey conducted by the authors in these two countries allows experimental estimates of the income gains from migration to be obtained by comparing the incomes of migrants to those who applied to migrate, but whose names were not drawn in the lottery, after allowing for the effect of non-compliance among some of those whose names were drawn. We find evidence of migrants being positively selected in terms of both observed and unobserved skills. As a result, non-experimental methods other than instrumental variables are found to overstate the gains from migration by 20 to 82 percent.
-
Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility
- Sep 15, 2006
In Let Their People Come, Pritchett argues that irresistible demographic forces leading to greater international labor mobility are being checked by immovable anti-immigration ideas of citizens of rich countries. He proposes breaking the deadlock through policies that support development while also being politically acceptable in those well-off nations. These include greater use of temporary worker permits; permit rationing; and protection of migrants’ fundamental human rights.
-
-
|
|
Print
Share
