Income Disparities, Population and Migration Flows Over the Twenty First Century

Frédéric Docquier and Joël Machado

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, 2017, vol. 3, issue 2, No 1, 125-149

Abstract: Abstract This paper provides worldwide projections of population, educational attainment, international migration and income for the twenty first century. We develop and parametrize a dynamic, stylized model of the world economy that accounts for interdependencies between socio-demographic and economic variables. Our baseline scenario is in line with the ‘high-fertility’ population prospects of the United Nations, assumes constant education and migration policies, long-run absolute convergence in total factor productivity (TFP) between emerging and high-income countries, and the absence of economic take-off in Africa. It predicts a rise in the income share of Asia (from 37 to 58% of the world income) and in the demographic share of Africa (from 10 to 29% of the world adult population). Over the twenty first century, the worldwide proportion of adult migrants will increase by less than 1% point (from 3.5 to 4.3%). Keeping its immigration policy unchanged, the 15 members of the European Union will see their average immigration rate increase from 7.4 to 18.2%. In Italy, the immigration pressure will increase fourfold. On the contrary, immigration rates will be fairly stable in the non-European, high-income countries. Then, we assess the sensitivity of our projections to changes in migration policies, TFP disparities, fertility and education. Large increases in the average European (and Italian) immigration rates are obtained under all the scenarios. More than ever, the management of immigration will represent a major societal challenge for European countries.

Keywords: Income prospects; Population prospects; Migration; World economy; Growth; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J22 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40797-017-0054-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:italej:v:3:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s40797-017-0054-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40797

DOI: 10.1007/s40797-017-0054-2

Access Statistics for this article

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti is currently edited by Roberto Cellini

More articles in Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti from Springer, Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().