A re-appraisal of the migration-development nexus: Testing the robustness of the migration transition hypothesis

This paper tests the migration transition hypothesis that emigration flows first increase and later decrease with a country’s economic development. This hypothesis yields a migration hump: an inverted-U relationship between emigration and development levels. Using a migration version of the gravity model this hypothesis is tested on a global panel dataset comprising 180 origin and destination countries and a 50-year timeframe (1970-2020). This is the most extensive panel dataset used so far to test the migration transition hypothesis. Our results confirm the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between development and emigration within a cross-country panel setting. Nevertheless, the migration hump cannot be interpreted as a causal relationship: for a given low-income country, an increase in economic development is not found to lead to higher emigration. In fact, for a subsample of 44 countries that have transitioned from low-income to middle-income status, emigration has rather declined with economic development. The migration transition hypothesis is therefore unfounded. Instead, the migration hump appears to be driven by an underlying cross-sectional pattern that cannot be fully controlled for: middle-income countries tend to exhibit higher emigration rates than either low- or high-income countries. The findings of this paper have important policy implications: development programs can simultaneously promote economic development and reduce emigration.