The Human Capital of Migrants and the Selectivities Underlying the Migration Process 1800 - 1950
Final Report Abstract
This project gathered large datasets on human capital selectivity of international migrants during the first era of globalization. For the first time, human capital selectivity was measured in a comprehensive way and empirical data on this unresolved question was provided. Looking at the first global era allowed to assess the mechanisms underlying human capital selectivity of migrants during a time, when migration flows around the world were not yet mainly determined by immigration policy. Therefore, much could be learned for migration pattern today, which intensify globally on a unknown scale. It could be shown, that migrants were not always a positively selected sample of the source country population in terms of numeracy. In terms of their biological standard of living, however, they mostly were. This implies, that although they might not have been more numerate and literate than their non-migrant compatriots, they still might have been positively selected in terms of health, and maybe also in terms of their willingness to accept risks. For source countries, migration implies that the human capital embodied in migrants was not applied in the source country and did not add to the human capital stock there. When numeracy is taken as an indicator, we found a small calculative brain gain for the source countries. For destination countries, it could be shown that human capital formation is sensitive to human capital selective immigration. And therefore, immigration impacts on further growth capabilities and economic prosperity of the destination country in the long run. Looking at various Latin American destination countries, immigration explains part of the human capital variance on the continent as a whole as well as within Brazilian regions, for example. Therefore, human capital characteristics of migrants as well as their destination choice might affect geographical distribution of human capital and therefore unequal growth capabilities across regions. As determinants of migrant selectivity, relative inequality was the one most prominent significant result. For the first time, comprehensive data on the age of mass migration was provided to test the Roy-Borjas model. The results - consistent with the model - were obtained in a variety of econometric approaches. This is a result that has important implications for today's immigration policy debates. Generally, the age-heaping approach as well as anthropometric methods turned out to be valuable indicators for studies on migration.
Publications
- (2010). "The Seed of Abundance and Misery: Peruvian Living Standards from the Early Republican Period to the End of the Guano Era (1820- 1880)." Economics and Human Biology, 8 (2), 145-52
Twrdek, Linda; Manzel, Kerstin
- (2012): "Brain Drain in the Age of Mass Migration: Does Relative Inequality Explain Migrant Selectivity?" Explorations in Economic History, 49 (2), 205-20
Stolz, Yvonne and Baten, Joerg
- (2013): "Growth effects of nineteenth-century mass migrations: "Fome Zero" for Brazil?" European Review of Economic History, 17 (1): 95-121
Stolz, Yvonne, Baten, Joerg and Botelho, Tarcisio
