Migration

Migration has surged in the past few decades, with more than 100 million people today living in a country different from the one in which they were born.1 Although there are many reasons for this surge, a key underlying one is the dramatic demographic growth of the past few decades. This has led, with a 15 to 20 year time lag, to the rapid growth of the world's labor force, especially among the young adults who make up the age group most likely to migrate.2 One migration expert has called this demographic shift "a profound disturbance over the last 100 years in the space-population ratio," which, in combination with an "overwhelming pace of technological change," has led to a "deterioration in the relationship between economic growth and employment."3

Researchers have documented this linkage more often in the case of rural-urban migration than in that of international migration, but there is no reason to doubt that the forces at work are similar in both situations. Such cases as the migration of Vietnamese villagers to the thinly populated Cambodian countryside4 or the boat people of Haiti (who have risked death at sea to emigrate even in times of relative political security in their country) indicate the importance of rapid population growth in international migration.

It is unlikely that local economies will generate the jobs needed to employ the tens of millions of people added to the labor force each year, and the search for decent jobs is the leading reason people migrate. When the growth of a country's labor force outpaces its creation of jobs, it is only logical that people will seek employment in other countries where they perceive good jobs are plentiful. There is also the growing possibility that deteriorating environmental conditions related to population growth–water and food shortages, for example, or human-induced climate change–will spur large movements of population across international borders.5 Lower rates of population growth can help ease the pressures to migrate and improve the underlying conditions that force many people to seek a better life elsewhere.

Even in the short term, population programs that provide greater access to family planning and better educational and economic opportunities for women make it easier for families to improve their lives in their home communities. Access to family planning and other reproductive health services for recent migrants improves their health and well-being and arguably helps ease their assimilation in the communities that have received them.6