Working paper No 74
Migration Balances: Concept, Hypotheses and Discussion
October 2008 - Thomas Mélonio, AFD
This article describes the concept of migration balance and its usefulness before offering an initial estimate of OECD countries’ migration balances. Here, movements of people are identified and then assigned a value in light of the public investments in the education that the migrants received in their countries of origin. Expatriated and impatriated education investment stocks are measured for each country. Net balances are calculated by comparing the stock of human capital in two different years, 1990 and 2000. An estimate of the stock of expatriated human capital is proposed for countries that are not members of the OECD. The implications of this new type of accounting are then discussed, with particular emphasis on developing countries. The last section discusses the parameters of a possible mechanism to share the value added from migration.