Is welfare the magnet that draws the migrants? Lessons from Australasia

There is considerable evidence that people take welfare state provisions into account when making migration decisions, but it is not always easy to separate the effects of changes in social security provision from myriad other push and pull factors. This lecture examines evidence that economists call a ‘natural experiment’: a major policy shock that allows a comparison of people who were affected with people who were not. The lecture focuses on how the 2001 removal of labour market-related social security eligibility affected New Zealand migrants to Australia. UK migrants to Australia, who were not affected by the policy changes, provide a ‘control group.’ New Zealand migrants arriving after the policy changes were more likely to visit their home country temporarily, or return permanently. Implications of this finding for the case of the European Union will be explored.

Hosted by: Dr Jakub Bijak, Social Statistics & Demography, University of Southampton