The rapid aging of both rich and middle income countries will make their economies increasingly dependent on migration from poorer countries, and the process needs to be better managed, the World Bank said on Tuesday.
The Bank’s latest World Development Report said some 184 million people worldwide now live in stateless countries, 43% in low- and middle-income countries. About 37 million of the total are refugees, a number that has tripled in the past decade.
Some countries are facing a rapid decline in the working-age adult population, including Spain, which is projected to shrink by more than a third by 2100, with over-65s rising to nearly 40% of the population from the current 20%, lending to development said.
Countries including Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia and Turkey may also soon need more foreign workers as their populations are no longer growing, while cross-border migration movements are already becoming more complex, with destination and origin countries spanning all income levels, the report said.
Migration of poorer countries population & how it can be powerful:
“Migration can be a powerful force for prosperity and development,” World Bank Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg said in a statement. “When properly managed, it provides benefits to all people – in the societies of origin and destination.”
The gains are greater for both destination countries and migrants if their skills are well-matched to the requirements in destination countries. If the skills match is poor, the cost of accepting refugees should be shared multilaterally, it said.
More difficult policy challenges arise when the skills match is poor and migrants are not refugees, often leading to deportation and putting pressure on transit countries. The report said greater international development efforts are needed in countries of origin to reduce the need for migration driven by economic hardship.
The World Bank said countries of origin should make labor migration an explicit part of their development strategy and aim to reduce the cost of remittances to families at home, facilitate the transfer of knowledge from their diasporas abroad and build skills that are in demand globally.
The bank said destination countries should encourage migration from populations where their skills are in high demand, adding that new financial instruments would be developed multilaterally to help countries deal with stateless people in a predictable way.
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