Economic Effects of Emigration on Sending Countries

This article surveys the economic consequences of international migration on sending countries. It first provides a broad overview of recent research on migration and development, beginning with the sizes of the emigrant/immigrant stocks and the possibilities for migration-related income gains, both direct migration-related impacts and the resulting remittance flows. Recent advances have led to a reassessment of the effects of migration on development, often leading to a more sanguine view compared to earlier work on the "brain drain." However, the state of knowledge is still too rudimentary to identify when migration is beneficial for development. This uncertainty is particularly pronounced for skilled migration, which is increasingly the object of rich-country policies.