L'immigration « choisie » face aux défis économiques du vieillissement démographique

The potential economic impact of a selective migration policy are widely misunderstood. Three types of agents are affected : the migrants, the population of the leaving country and the natives of the host country. Based on a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents, this paper deals with the consequences of replacement migration on the French economy. Compared to a baseline scenario reproducing the French ageing process, we consider two alternative migratory policies. The first one evaluates the migratory flows necessary to stabilise the active population size with the same skill structure of the immigrant flows as in the baseline (replacement migration). The second one is based on the same flows and assumes that additional immigrants have the same skills than the natives (selective migration). We show that replacement migration requires important flows whereas it implies only weak economic and financial effects. A more selective immigration policy accentuates the gains in the middle run (near 2050) but the impact of immigration on fiscal balance is still small relative to the size of the overall imbalance itself. In the long run (near 2100), this selective policy involves lower fiscal gains than those of the replacement migration policy. Finally, all cohorts and skill groups of natives realise welfare gains in the two scenarii. Classification JEL : J61, I3, D58.