Global Migration Flow Table Estimates

A few months Demographic Research published my paper on estimating global migration flow tables. In the paper I developed a method to estimate international migrant flows, for which there is limited comparable data, to matches changes in migrant stock data, which are more widely available. The result was bilateral tables of estimated international migrant transitions between 191 countries for four decades, which I believe are a first of kind. The estimates in an excel spreadsheet are available as a additional file on the journals website.

My migest R package contains the ffs function for the flows-from-stock method used in the paper

The estimates in long format are also in a Google spreadsheet here (previewed below):

Publication Details:

Abel, G. J. (2013). Estimating global migration flow tables using place of birth data. Demographic Research, 28 (March), 505–546. doi:10.4054/DemRes.2013.28.18

International migration flow data often lack adequate measurements of volume, direction and completeness. These pitfalls limit empirical comparative studies of migration and cross national population projections to use net migration measures or inadequate data. This paper aims to address these issues at a global level, presenting estimates of bilateral flow tables between 191 countries. A methodology to estimate flow tables of migration transitions for the globe is illustrated in two parts. First, a methodology to derive flows from sequential stock tables is developed. Second, the methodology is applied to recently released World Bank migration stock tables between 1960 and 2000 (Özden et al. 2011) to estimate a set of four decadal global migration flow tables. The results of the applied methodology are discussed with reference to comparable estimates of global net migration flows of the United Nations and models for international migration flows. The proposed methodology adds to the limited existing literature on linking migration flows to stocks. The estimated flow tables represent a first-of-a-kind set of comparable global origin destination flow data.