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Gunnar Miller's avatar

"The more things change, the more things stay the same then. But what I find particularly interesting about the study of Blanc and Wacziarg is that they find that higher emigration from (over?)populated countries facing a natural crisis like a famine helped the rest of the people who stayed. Countries with higher emigration rates subsequently had higher growth and developed faster. If it weren’t for the people moving to the US or the colonies, the UK, Ireland, etc. would be much poorer today."

It isn't clear to me from the text, but over what timeframe is that final chart? If it captures German, UK, and Irish emigration to North America in the seventeenth-twentieth centuries, one could indeed conclude that emigration helps the home country by reducing labor competition and driving technological innovation to fill the gap. But there *were* more than ample sources of cheap labor for Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, namely millions of colonized people and slavery (early on for Britain directly with sugar and rum, but continuing by proxy through its dependence on cotton from the southern US). And if the timeframe is long enough, it doubtless reflects remittances, always a feature of emigration but one that accelerated once people could wire money home.

I completely agree with you that the return on investment on foreign aid is very high, and that we cut it at our peril.

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Marcel Slootweg's avatar

Interesting opinion. Although I like to advise you to read the landmark book How migration really works, written by professor Hein de Haas, a Dutch scholar on migration. He places migration also in a broad historical perspective. Funfact: the main fundings are not foreign direct investment and official development assistance, but the remittances of the migrant workers. Estimates, made by the Worldbank, are about $ 905 billion (2024).

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