So far we have not studied migration. Everything we have learned can apply to an
So far we have not studied migration. Everything we have learned can apply to an isolated population. But very few societies are isolated any longer. Immigration and emigration pressures can greatly influence a nation’s standard of living and economic potential.
Usually when we speak of immigration, we mean legal migration across national borders. But the motives and consequences of migration are similar whether the movement is legal, illegal, across national borders, or just across the neighbourhood.
Governments tightly regulate immigration, but there are always some people who manage to enter illegally. Governments typically do not keep track of emigration. In this way both immigration and emigration pose measurement challenges.
If migration data are lacking, you can estimate the NMR using the demographic equation from Chapter 3. If you know the change in population, and births and deaths during the year, you can infer the rate of increase due to net migration. If further you know the immigration rate, you can infer the emigration rate.
People migrate because they are PUSHed out of their old place of residence and/or PULLed into their new place of residence. We’ll discuss the special push and pull factors associated with human trafficking and slavery in our next chapter. For people who are choosing to migrate,
Depending on the push or pull factors, those who migrate may share certain characteristics.
E.S. Lee (1966) emphasized that “migrants are not a random selection of the population at origin.” For one thing, migration is more likely at certain stages of life, such as graduation from an educational program, entering the labor force, leaving the parental home, widowhood or divorce, and retirement.
Abramitsky, Boustan, and Erikkson (2012) studied men who migrated from Norway to the United States in the late nineteenth century, men who had non-emigrating brothers. They found that households with poorer economic prospects were more likely to send migrants to the US, and that within households, men with poorer prospects were more likely to migrate. Men who migrated from rural areas ended up doing 93% better financially than their brothers who remained at home, whereas men from urban areas did 42% better financially after migrating.
Simone Wegge (2009) has studied data from more than 1000 villages in the German principality of Hesse-Cassel during 1852-1857. Her data suggest that, up to a certain point of wealth, people with more money were more likely to immigrate than those without. After all, the trip to New York from Hamburg cost twice the yearly wage of a labourer. But at the highest levels of wealth, there was not the incentive to emigrate. This suggests that regions with more polarization of income will experience less emigration.[1]. Wegge found that the villages which experienced the most emigration were those
- that practiced unigeniture: the eldest son would inherit the entire farm, leaving little for other sons.
- those which had higher