There exist marked differences in the educational attainment of immigrants, depending on both the level and distribution of income in the country of origin and destination. This paper estimates an education-specific gravity equation for migration between European countries. Given the lack of data on migration flows by level of education, these are proxied by the difference in resident migrants by nationality and level of education, between the years 2000 and 1990. I find that highly educated individuals are more likely to migrate. They are less sensitive to geographical and cultural distance as barriers to migration, but are not unambiguously more responsive to wage differentials. Controlling for education-specific wage differences between origin and destination removes only part of the observed differences in migration behaviour between education groups.

PERSYN Damiaan; 

2017-02-02

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC104494

978-92-79-64431-3,   

1831-9424,   

EUR 28286 EN,    OP LF-NA-28286-EN-N,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC104494,   

10.2791/373605,