This paper documents a stylized fact: the Third World has been undergoing an emigration life cycle since the 1960s, and, except for Africa, emigration rates have been level or even declining since a peak in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The current economic crisis will serve only to accelerate those trends. The paper estimates the economic and demographic fundamentals driving these emigration life cycles to the United States since 1970 – income and education gaps between the US and the sending country, poverty traps and the size of the cohort at risk in the sending country, and the migrant stock in the US. It then projects the life cycle up to 2024. The projections imply that pressure on Third World emigration over the next two decades will not increase, after which it will decline. It also suggests that future US immigrants will be more African and less Hispanic than in the past.
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Paper provided by Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
606.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Ximena Clark & Timothy J. Hatton & Jeffery G. Williamson, 2002.
"Explaining US Immigration 1971-1998,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
453, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
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