• On developed countries

On developed countries

Assumptions about international migration are an increasingly important component of demographic projections. Yet most official immigration projections both in the United States and abroad rely on ad-hoc assumptions based on little theory and virtually no definable methodology.

Therefore the purpose of this report is:

• to assess the state of immigration projection practice
• to explore theoretical insights and empirical research about immigration
• and to discuss how these insights and research could be used to create a superior projection model

The report

• describes the current projection methods of leading national and international projection-making agencies, from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Social Security Administration to the United Nations and the World Bank
• scans the wide array of theoretical frameworks that social scientists from a variety of disciplines have proposed to explain international migration flows
• surveys the growing body of empirical literature on efforts to statistically test the power of these theories in explaining historical trends in international migration

The report then goes on to describe the authors' proposed framework for a long-term immigration projection model. The model is "driver-based," meaning that immigration is projected based on observed associations between migration behaviour and other conditions, such as multinational trends in population, wages and living standards, trade and capital flows, age distribution, education, urbanisation, and market orientation or globalisation.

The authors argue that taken together, the projection and scenario-building capabilities of their model could help address some of the most consequential policy issues of the twenty-first century:

• the model would be able to isolate the independent impact on immigration of greater trade between the United States and Mexico or other countries in Latin America
• it would quantify the impact that higher per capita income, lower absolute poverty, or higher educational attainment is likely to have in countries at different stages of development
• it would isolate the effect of China’s current policy regime and tell us how much emigration is likely to rise if economic reform ultimately leads to political liberalisation
• many policymakers hope that more immigration from younger and faster growing developing countries in the future will help provide economic and fiscal support for aging welfare states throughout the developed world.- the model could tell policymakers how reforms to old-age entitlements might affect the outcome of immigration
• finally, it could tell policymakers how divergent demographic and development trends are likely to affect the size and composition of future migration flows

The report concludes that this approach has the potential to greatly improve long-term projections of net immigration to a major developed country like the United States. [adapted from authors]

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