Income and the desire to migrate

Monica Langella and Alan Manning

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We analyse the role of household and country-level personal income in explaining both the desire to emigrate and the desired destination country. We use data from the Gallup World Poll and applications to the US Diversity Visa Program. We find that higher GDP per capita at destination is strongly associated with a higher desire to move to that country. We do not find strong support for the selection hypothesis that people want to move to countries with a higher return to their level of education. On emigration, we find that both personal income and aggregate income matter. In poorer countries richer people are more likely to want to emigrate, while the opposite is true in richer countries. In looking at the impact of origin country income on the desire to emigrate, we find little evidence for the upward part of Zelinsky's 'hump-shape' migration transition hypothesis.

Keywords: international migration; migration intentions; development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2021-09-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/113875/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Income and the desire to migrate (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:113875

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