As a development economist it is easy to show that “in situ” interventions that have very large returns in raising the income or wellbeing of people in a given place are relatively rare (e.g. the “gold standard” RCT evaluation of the “graduation” approach to poverty across five countries make claims it is an effective program worth funding based on an ROI of around 7 percent). and have modest impacts. It is also easy to show that since the productivity of people with the exact same characteristics varies by factor multiples (the “place premium“) the income gains from labor mobility from poorer countries to richer countries are massive (here), orders of magnitude larger than most anti-poverty programs (here ). And, not surprisingly given the wage differentials, according to Gallup surveys around the world there are around a billion people willing to move if they were allowed to (or, if asked about permanent movement, about 750 million).
But, all that said, and roughly undisputed, there is little or no attention to international labor mobility (except as refugees from crisis or conflict, as we see recently with the war on Ukraine). I think that is because most people see tight restrictions on labor mobility in rich industrial countries as a “condition” not a “problem” and just take it for granted that since greater labor mobility is politically impossible it is not worth talking about.
My new paper “The political acceptability of time-limited labor mobility:
Five Bricks through the Overton window” (which was presented at a recent symposium at NYU and has been submitted to Public Affairs Quarterly) does not dispute that substantially greater labor mobility into rich countries has been politically impossible (while “immigration” has been going up in most OECD countries but it has been going up slowly, from a low base, and as much from within rich country mobility as allowing people from poorer countries), but argues that when the facts change, people can and do change their minds, and that the facts about rich countries are changing in ways that will put greater labor mobility, of multiple modalities, including more widespread time-limited mobility to meet specific labor market needs, squarely into the Overton window.
A principal driving cause of the shift in political acceptability is the combination of demographic shifts, where an ageing population implies many, many more people who need to be supported and many few labor force aged people to do the work and pay the taxes. And, shifts in the labor market are creating many jobs that require core skills (but not high levels of formal schooling) such that these jobs just cannot be filled as there aren’t enough native born youth who want these jobs (nor, in an economically efficient world, should they).
That much greater labor mobility from poorer to richer countries will become politically feasible in the near to medium run horizon (within a decade) because it will be in the best interest of voters in rich countries to allow it (again, in various controlled modalities, not “open borders”) is another view of mine that is in a decided minority, but right. You’ll see.
This is the paper revised as part of the submission process to Public Affairs Quarterly on May 20, 2022.