Migration, the Fast Track to Development?
In an interview discussing “linear” vs. “transformative” types of philanthropy, Prof. Lant Pritchett writes the following:
“The easiest way to increase a poor person’s wealth is to let him or her move to a rich country. Most poor people have low productivity because of the environment that they inhabit rather than because they have intrinsically low productivity. Because of this, they can make much more money if they move to a better economic environment.
“A woman from Bangladesh could make more money working for three months at a ski resort than all of the microcredit that she would have access to over her lifetime in Bangladesh. Local interventions designed to help poor people in a country like Bangladesh tend to raise their incomes by amounts in the neighborhood of 15%, whereas allowing them to work in a developed country tends to raise their income by amounts in the neighborhood of 1000%. There is evidence for this from randomized controlled trials.
“Because the difference in earning power across countries is so large, the potential gains from liberalizing immigration are in the trillions of dollars. However, the political obstacles to liberalizing immigration, e.g. in the US, are enormous because voters in the US are opposed to immigration. Liberalizing immigration would require a long-term transformative effort to change a lot of parties’ minds, analogous to the civil rights movement.”
If only wealthier countries had the courage and magnanimity to allow people to go, work, and live where their productivity is greater. How many Indian could be richer if they could just move where they could make more? How about their families receiving remittances at home?
The same idea can be said for Bangladeshis wanting to migrate to India. The per capita income in Bangladesh $1,800 compared to India’s $3,330. Not only would voluntary migration help poorer Bangladeshis, it would also help those who hire them and buy the goods they could produce here.
What do we need to do to persuade Indians at large to welcome Bangladeshis with open arms?
