Estimating Net Migration by Level of Education in European NUTS3 Regions

Leo van Wissen , NIDI - Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute
Marianne Tønnessen, Oslo Metropolitan University
Becky Arnold, NIDI - Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

Although migration of people with various educational levels is essential for regional development all over Europe, very few European countries have available data at the regional NUTS3 level on migrations by age, sex and educational level. In this study, we have developed a method for estimating net migration for all EU’s NUTS3 regions by level of education. The method is essentially combining different sources of information together at the national and regional level, using iterative proportional fitting to find the minimum information distribution for regional populations, and demographic accounting principles to estimate the resulting net migration estimates from these population estimates. We start by estimating a model that predicts the population shares with high, medium and low education in each NUTS3 region, by sex and 5-year age groups. We use data from the Netherlands and Norway to estimate and test the model, where explanatory variables are the NUTS2 educational distribution and a regional economic index that includes Gross Regional Product and unemployment as indicators. Second, from these estimated population shares we use demographic accounting principles to calculate net migration from/to each of EU’s NUTS3 regions, by age, sex and level of education. This is done for the years 2010, 2015 and 2020, and the model will also be used to make projections up until 2040.

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 Presented in Session 94. Flash Session Data and Methods in Internal Migration and Urbanization