A gendered assessment of highly skilled emigration

Abstract

Although women form a large and increasing proportion of international migrants, women's mobility has generally been overlooked in the literature. Quantifying and characterizing female migration should lead to a better understanding of the forces that shape international migration. We build an original data set providing gender-disaggregated indicators of international migration by educational attainment for 195 source countries in 1990 and 2000. We find that women represent an increasing share of the immigration stock in the OECD countries and exhibit higher skilled emigration rates than men. © 2009 The Population Council, Inc.