International Migration and Human Development

Dean Yang

No HDRP-2009-29, Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) from Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Abstract: This paper reviews the relationship between international migration and human development. First, it reviews what we know about the factors that drive migration from developing to developed countries. Second, it reviews existing knowledge about the impact of international migration and remittances on the economic and human development of migrants’ source countries. These first two sections of the paper are accompanied by an assessment of the gaps in our knowledge that need to be filled with further research. The last section of the paper outlines policies that could help raise the development impact of migration and remittances. First, governments should extend absentee voting rights to overseas citizens. In addition, facilitating migrants’ access to and use of financial services could bring substantial benefits. Furthermore, governments can profitably devote self-discovery and enterprise promotion efforts to small-scale activities. Finally, there could be substantial benefits from encouraging overseas citizens to retire at home while taking advantage of accumulated retirement benefits from their migration host countries.

Keywords: International migration; remittances; human development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 O1 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2009-07, Revised 2009-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as background research for the 2009 Human Development Report.

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/papers/HDRP_2009_29.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: International Migration and Human Development (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hdr:papers:hdrp-2009-29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) from Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by HDRO/UNDP ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).