Development and the Educational Composition of International Migrants across Cities

Dorothee Beckendorff , EPFL
Wenxiu Du, EPFL
Mathias Lerch, EPFL

This paper presents how the educational composition of international immigrants to cities varies with local development. The study quantifies and structures international immigration inflows by education level as a function of local development, comparing cities of different sizes. We employ a multivariate model to examine how the educational composition of international immigrants varies with the Human Development Index (HDI) of destination cities, proxied by a composite measure of health, education, and household amenities derived from census data. City-level immigration data by educational attainment were compiled from harmonized census microdata and linked to Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). The dataset covers 311 cities in 13 countries and 29 censuses across five decades. With rising development, cities attract an increasingly educated immigrant population, characterized by higher shares of secondary and university graduates and fewer individuals with little schooling. This educational upgrading is more consistent and gradual in the largest and secondary cities, while smaller and intermediate cities show more irregular compositions across development levels.This work contributes to monitoring how human capital mobility reshapes the educational composition of urban populations at different stages of development.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 36. Composition of International Migration