Rapid aging in high- and middle-income countries is intensifying the global competition for workers. The co-directors of the World Bank's 2023 World Development Report explain how policies can make migration work better for development in the face of pressing demographic challenges. Learn more:
Transcript
Paul Blake
Let's talk about migration.
Pundit 1
Some people in Kent are actually frightened.
Pundit 2
There are some people who are frightened, but there are also lots of people who are getting jobs because of migration.
Paul Blake
It's an incredibly fraught topic in many countries. I realize. But that's odd because this isn't a new phenomenon. Humans have been moving forever. Human history is one big story of movement and migration. So how many migrants are there today? It's actually about 200 million people in total, which is less than 3% of the global population.
Paul Blake
Meanwhile, it might seem like all migrants come from poor countries and move to wealthy countries. But in reality, about half of all migrants, half of that 200 million figure, live in developing countries. And what if I told you that many, if not most countries, are soon going to need more migrants? That some of them are even going to start competing for them?
Journalist
Fears of losing a vital safety net for the nation's elderly.
Paul Blake
Many countries are aging fast. They're just not having enough children to maintain their current population levels. Take Italy. For every woman in the country, just 1.2 children are being born - far below the 2.1 that is needed to maintain the current population. By the end of the century, its population is expected to be like half of what it is today.
Paul Blake
Not only that, but when you look at the age breakdown of its population today, you spot another problem. You have more old people than children. Today. What happens when they're elderly? Who's going to take care of them? And as they draw on social services, pensions, other programs, there'll be relatively fewer working age people paying into those systems. It's not only Italy or rich countries.
Paul Blake
Similar dynamics are playing out in middle income countries as well. Countries like Bangladesh, Colombia, Mexico, T¨¹rkiye just to name a few. Only a generation ago there were four or five kids in each family. Today, the birth rates have fallen below replacement levels and they continue to go down, meaning these countries face significant population declines. They may well become old before they get rich and thus less equipped than wealthy countries to handle pressure on social services from an aging population.
Paul Blake
And yet some countries have the opposite problem. A population explosion. Take Niger, Somalia, Afghanistan, just as examples. Their birth rates are well above replacement levels. Nearly seven kids per woman in Niger. An age breakdown show how young these populations are. In just a few short years. These youngsters will be adults. Their population is increasing very fast. They may not have the natural resources that are needed for so many people to eat, have shelter and prosper.
Paul Blake
Where will they find jobs? And what happens if they don't? And then there's the climate angle. It could aggravate many of the factors that spur people to move, in some cases with no real prospects for employment and often at great risk. These are dramatic problems that are going to have to be addressed and migration can play a major role.
Paul Blake
So how can migration work? To find out, let's phone up the directors of the 2023 World Development Report.
Paul Blake
You know, the report says that migration can be a solution to the demographic challenges that we lay out at the beginning of the video. Can you explain that?
Xavier Devictor
We have to recognize that not all migrants are the same. There are different types of movement, and each of them calls for a different response.
Paul Blake
What do you mean by that?
Xavier Devictor
Now, traditionally, there have been two ways to look at this. On the one hand, you have the economic perspective. It's essentially a question of costs and benefits. Does migration bring costs? Does it bring benefits? Fundamentally, it's about whether migrants bring skills that match the needs of the destination economy. If they do great, everybody gains. If they don't, things get complicated because essentially this school of thought would say, ¡°Well, the cost of integrating them are higher than their potential contribution.¡±
Paul Blake
But if someone doesn't have skills that are in demand that the needed skills?
Xavier Devictor
That's not the end of the story because you see, there's another way to look at it. After World War II countries agreed that when people flee conflict, violence or persecution, they should be granted asylum. They should be provided with a safe place to stay, regardless of the costs. And so the central question is: what's driving people movements? Is this because they have a fear for their life in their country of origin?
Xavier Devictor
Or is it because they are seeking opportunities in the country of destination?
Paul Blake
So, so who then is right?
Xavier Devictor
It's not a question of right or wrong. It's really a question of having two different ways to look at the same issue. And that sometimes creates controversies or misunderstandings. And so what we've tried to do with this report is to combine the two perspectives.
?a?lar ?zden
When we bring these two approaches together, things become much more manageable and they make much more sense. The vast majority of the migrants migrate for economic reasons. They provide the skills that are a strong match in the destination labor market and the community.
Paul Blake
But wait a minute. How do you decide what is costly, what is beneficial?
?a?lar ?zden
And basically to match the extent of the match is determined by the migrant¡¯s human capital as well as the policy environments and the social environment in the destination community.
Paul Blake
On origin countries... I can't help but think that migration, especially if we're talking about people who have skills, who have in-demand skills, don't they stand to lose, you know, they're the most valuable workers?
?a?lar ?zden
There are social implications for the origin country, no doubt. But there are policy measures that origin countries can implement where the negative effects are minimized and the gains are maximized. So remittances is one of them. I left home, I came here and when my parents need money, I send them back. But the real impact is not necessarily with this money.
?a?lar ?zden
It's about human capital. It's about social capital.
Paul Blake
What about people who who don't have in-demand skills? I mean, it all sounds very straightforward, very easy so far. But what about other people?
Joyce Antone Ibrahim
You know? That's a good point. So this is where things get a bit complicated. So, some of these people are refugees and as a result, they're fleeing conflict and violence. And so they need to be protected. And that's that's under international law. But again, if they don't bring the right skills for the destination country, then there's going to be a cost for the host country.
Joyce Antone Ibrahim
And so the question is, how do we manage that costs?
Paul Blake
What do you mean by that?
Joyce Antone Ibrahim
There's two things that we can do here. So first is to share the cost internationally, because refugees are fleeing conflict, they usually end up in the first country, first safe country that they can get to. Only 10% of countries are hosting a very significant number of refugees. So that means there's 90% of countries that are not. They need to be doing much more.
Joyce Antone Ibrahim
If they're not going to take in the refugees, then maybe give them some money.
Paul Blake
It's still expensive to host refugees, no?
Joyce Antone Ibrahim
Right. So that's my point. The second thing that we can try to do is actually reduce these costs, because, yes, it is very expensive. Maybe instead of leaving them in a tent or in a camp and providing food, we should help these refugees get to a place where they can find a job and work and sustain themselves and actually contribute to the economy, which many refugees would like to do.
Paul Blake
Sure. But when I read the news, the controversy doesn't seem to be with migrants who have in-demand skills or even with refugees. It seems there's a lot of concern about what to do when people don't have skills and frankly, people who aren't refugees.
Quy-Toan Do
Yeah, so the bottom left quadrant do not qualify for international protection. And there are those whom qualifications and profile are going to be a very weak match for the destination society. Think about some who are fleeing a society plagued with crime, but that would not qualify them for refugee protection.
Quy-Toan Do
No matter what political controversies, no matter what social anxieties that those flows might be creating, we're dealing with human beings.
Quy-Toan Do
I think we need to also acknowledge that a lot of people are fleeing not conflict, not persecution, but poverty. They are fleeing decreasing incomes, decreased agricultural productivity because of a warming weather.
Quy-Toan Do
And giving them the opportunity to migrate internally to adopt in the country so that they don't have to take those dangerous routes is also the longer term option for providing a more orderly migration. And for the rest, we need to acknowledge that there's development so that it changes their incentive to migrate, but countries administratively need to be able to return them in a humane way because their sovereignty is also part of that equation.
Paul Blake
What's your key takeaway from a year of thinking about migration so intensely?
Quy-Toan Do
Well, I think the main takeaway is migration is a global phenomenon. It has always been the case. And it will always be the case. And this is a great source of opportunity for prosperity for countries of every income level.