The analysis and prediction of migration movements

Germany's working population is about to decrease in the upcoming decades. This is of central importance for business, administration and politics in several respects. In this context, the development of net immigration plays a crucial role in the projection of important planning parameters for economic policy in the next decades.

The analysis and prediction of migration movements in this report will take into account the individual decision-making of potential migrants. The decision to migrate is based on a combination of characteristics of the country of origin and destination, as well as personal and family circumstances. The central methodological challenge is the empirical assessment of the "self-selection mechanisms". Ultimately, this is only adequately possible at the micro level.

Our applied micro-level approach goes beyond existing approaches, which have mostly based their forecasts on aggregated time series. A microlevel foundation has the advantage that relevant influencing factors of migration are better understood and can therefore be incorporated into forecasts more precisely. The forecasts can also be consistently broken down into regional or socio-economic characteristics.

Final Report (in German)