Income Per Head Across an Internationally-Dispersed Population

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Suppose that the typical international migrant is motivated by the chance to move from low-income to high-income employment opportunities. Then it should be true that (i) the income of the typical migrant should be higher after migration than before; and (ii) the total aggregated income of the home + diaspora population should be higher than if no migration had taken place, unless there are large negative spillover effects from migration. This paper uses a new dataset for 225 jurisdictions to estimate, for each migration source country, the income earned by its global diaspora, using census data to trace the location of the diaspora and the per capita GDP of each host economy as at 2000. Aggregating the diaspora with the home-resident population then provides, for each source economy, an estimate of the migration-adjusted income level of the total de jure [home-born] population, which can be compared with the conventional per-capita GDP and GNI measures commonly used in development comparisons. Assuming that migrants earn the average per capita income of their host economy, the paper finds that, for a large group of countries with populations below 2 million and per capita GDP below $20,000, accounting for the diaspora’s income significantly raises the estimate of overall per capita income. Countries with more than 5 million population have generally not shared this experience. International migration is an especially important contributor to economic sustainability for a subset of small jurisdictions, whose characteristics are described. Remittances are discussed in their wider context of ths internationally-dispersed population's life strategies.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

I have worked on the development experience of small island economies for thirty years, and have published a series of papers in major journals on the role of migration and remittances in development. The MIRAB model presented in 1985 by Professor Ray Watters and myself has been an influential paradigm for small-island development research ever since. I am actively involved with the "Island Studies Journal". I have other research interests in macroeconomics, growth theory, energy economics, and regulatory economics.