Guillaume Marois - Demographic and labor force impacts of future immigration flows into Europe: does the region of origin matter?

• Presenting author: Guillaume Marois (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis)

• Authors: Guillaume Marois, Michaela Potancokova, Miguel Gonzalez-Leonardo

• Session: B01A - Population Projections - Tuesday 9:00-10:30 - Ceremonial Hall

• Slides: PDF

Immigration has become an important demographic component in developed European countries. At the same time, many countries have experienced an increase in immigration from non-European origins and more diversified flows. Most population projections consider immigrants as a nearly homogeneous population. In this study, we built a specific population microsimulation projection model (QuantMig-Mic) for European countries that includes place of birth as a source of heterogeneity for other components that could affect population size, age structure, and economic dependency ratios. We simulated different scenarios from 2020 to 2060 in which the region of birth of future immigrant flows are drastically changed compared to recent trends. The results showed that major shifts in the origin of immigration flows towards Europe would affect the spatial distribution of the population on the continent and, consequently, locally the population size of some countries. However, the age structure would be only marginally affected, and shifts in the composition of immigration flows do not significantly alter the rising age dependency ratio. Moreover, even in the countries most affected in terms of population size, no scenario leads to significant changes in the total labor force participation rate or in the educational structure of the workforce.