World Development Report 2023

• World Development Report 2023 was recently released by World Bank.
• Report is titled “Migrants, Refugees and Societies” and proposes an integrated framework to maximize development impacts of cross-border movements on both destination and origin countries and on migrants and refugees themselves.
• It categorised migrants into four types – Refugees with skills in demand, economic migrants with skills that match with demand, distressed migrants and refugees.

Major Findings

• About 184 million people across the world, including 37 million refugees lack citizenship in country in which they live.
• There is 120% income gain for Indians working abroad as compared to 40% income gain through internal migration.
• Low skilled Indian migrants, who migrated to U.S, tend to see a significant gain in their income of around 500%.
• India-US, India-Bangladesh and India- Gulf Cooperating Council considered among the top migrant corridors.
• The share of working-age adults will drop sharply in many countries over the next few decades e.g. Spain.
  • However, developing nations such as India are observing an increase in the number of young people.

Recommendations

• The report introduces the “Match-Motive Framework,” a labour economics-based approach that emphasizes how well migrants’ skills and attributes match the needs of the destination countries.
• Countries of destination promote migration in sectors where migrant skills are highly sought after.
• International cooperation and multilateral efforts to strengthen the match of migrants’ skills with the needs of destination societies.