Measuring International Skilled Migration: New Estimates Controlling for Age of Entry

Michel Beine, Frédéric Docquier and Hillel Rapoport ()

No 613, RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM)

Abstract: Recent data on international skilled migration define skilled migrants according to education level independently of whether education has been acquired in the home or in the host country. In this paper we use immigrants' age of entry as a proxy for where education has been acquired. Data on age of entry are available from a subset of receiving countries which together represent more than 3/4 of total skilled immigration to the OECD. Using these data and a simple gravity model, we estimate the age-of-entry structure of skilled immigration and propose alternative brain drain measures by excluding those arrived before age 12, 18 and 22. The results for 2000 show that on average, 68% of the global brain drain is accounted for by emigration of people aged 22 or more upon arrival (78% and 87% for the 18 and 12 year old thresholds, respectively). For some countries this indeed makes a substantial difference. However, cross-country differences are globally maintained, resulting in extremely high correlation levels between corrected and incorrected rates. Similar results are obtained for 1990.

Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_13_06.pdf (application/pdf)

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:crm:wpaper:0613

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CReAM Administrator () and Matthew Nibloe ().