Gabriel Gomes - The importance of economic migration in long-term population projections : the case of Luxembourg

• Presenting author: Gabriel Gomes (STATEC)

• Authors: Gabriel Gomes, Tom Haas

• Session: C03D - Migration - Wednesday 14:00-15:30 - Erika-Weinzierl Hall

In Luxembourg, as in other small countries, the population varies mainly as a result of migration. The excess of arrivals over departures is the cause of population growth. The population projection exercise becomes more complicated for Luxembourg because of the weight preponderance of net migration in growth population and its volatility. This last is, however, largely explained by the macroeconomic fluctuations. Foreign workers in Luxembourg choose between living in Luxembourg or in the region border. This arbitration underlies the discrepancy between the labor force and the population projections for Luxembourg.

The present work accounts for this specificity and builds on the work from Haas and Peltier (STATEC, 2017) which couples the demographic and the macroeconomic model of the Luxembourg (LuxGEM). Results show that population projections from Eurostat, which consider migration as an exogenous factor, tend to underestimate population growth in Luxembourg.