Demographic and labor force impacts of future immigration flows into Europe: does an immigrant’s region of origin matter?

Abstract

Immigration has become a key demographic component in developed European nations. At the same time, many countries have seen an increase in immigration from non-European origins and more diversified migrant flows. In most population projections, however, immigrants are considered an almost homogenous population. This study utilizes a population microsimulation projection model (QuantMig-Mic) for 31 European countries that includes place of birth as a source of heterogeneity for components that could impact population size, age structures, and economic dependency ratios. We simulated different scenarios from 2020 to 2060 in which the birth regions of future immigrant flows were changed drastically compared to recent trends. Our results showed that major shifts in the origin of immigration flows toward Europe would impact the spatial distribution of the population in the continent and therefore—at the local level—the population size of some countries. We found that the age structure would be only marginally affected and that shifts in the composition of immigration flows would not significantly alter the increasing age dependency ratio. Moreover, even in the countries most impacted in terms of population size, no scenario led to notable changes in the total labor force participation rate or in the educational structure of the labor force.