People Worldwide Are Less Inclined To Expatriate

In a time when goods and jobs seem to move across borders so very seamlessly, it’s sometimes jarring to remember that people don’t, especially when it comes to moving permanently. I’ve got a British friend who worked in New York for the last several years, but is stranded in London, waiting for his visa to clear before he returns. At the same time, my American friend just left for Portugal, with plans to marry his way to citizenship—needless to say, he’s not a great planner.

But if all barriers were out of the way, would you cut out from your own country? This is what Gallup has been asking people for 12 years: “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?”

They asked 519,108 adults in 154 countries from 2010 to 2012. If the respondents said yes, then they were asked, “To which country would you like to move?” and allowed to give a single response. Turns out 630 million people, or 13 percent of the world’s adults, would like to become expatriates.

The latest results from this survey are presented in terms of the Potential Net Migration Index—which is defined in relation to the country’s current population of adults. It goes from -100, which is where every adult leaves the country, up to, in theory, infinity.

The United States topped the list in terms of numbers. It would add 138 million adults from all across the world to its population, if they had their choice, followed by the UK and then Canada.

In terms of PNMI, though, Canada is at 145 percent, to the United States’ 45 percent, due to the fact that Canada’s population is slightly smaller than California’s.

The big trend, though, is people overall have less desire to move, which Gallup attributes to the worldwide economic downturn, particularly in Southern Europe. In Latin America, the trend was toward fewer people wanting to leave.

As a region, Sub-Saharan Africa still has the highest negative PNMI at -24, but the trend was toward less negativity. In the Middle East, the biggest change was, understandably, more hypothetical net population loss in Syria.

Some of rare places that have become more desirable are Northern European countries that have weathered the economic storm fairly ably—Germany, Norway, and Denmark.

Obviously this is just a hypothetical question, but it gives some idea of how human capital would move if unimpeded. Likewise, it’ll be interesting to see how this changes over the course of the years to come, as the image of the United States abroad has taken a beating lately. But also a rise in people who wish to stay in their own countries runs contrary to the narrative of national borders becoming less meaningful due to the world becoming more interconnected. Just as regional accents are persistent even on Twitter, people are remain homebodies, by and large.

@a_ben_richmond