How Fractal is High-skilled Immigration?

Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr, Çaǧlar Özden, and Christopher Parsons write,

The number of migrants with a tertiary degree rose nearly 130 percent from 1990 to 2010, while low skilled (primary educated) migrants increased by only 40 percent during that time. A pattern is emerging in which these high-skilled migrants are departing from a broader range of countries and heading to a narrower range of countries—in particular, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

I wonder if this pattern is fractal. That is, within the United States, do we see a net influx of high-skilled individuals to only a few metro areas? Within metro areas, do we see a net influx to only a few hot spots?

7 thoughts on “How Fractal is High-skilled Immigration?

  1. In canada the answers are yes, and moderatly so. Certain neighbourhoods attract certain ethnicites due to communities already being in place, but in a city like Vancouver, housing is tight enough that they can’t be that picky. I suspect that once you are on the scale of being on the subway system, any fractal effect breaks down.

  2. Living in Southern California, the answers are Yes! and Yes!

    A lot of the high skilled immigrants tend to keep within their homeland communities and they have a fair amount of automony. (Of course any reading of US history will tell most European immigrants did this as well.) However, by most second generation immigrants they assimilate into the the greater culture.

  3. It is (naturally) silly to conflate high skill and tertiary degrees; but
    if you are going to ask about educated people, then the question becomes:
    how do they establish residence? After all, the highly educated people
    go through a relatively few schools, at which they reside for a considerable
    period, and those are very much clustered spatially.

    As for high skill; if you discount generalists as low skill and specialists as high skill, then the question takes a new flavor; but overall, big cities, yes, and then within the city, maybe there are neighborhood specializations based around industries?

  4. You need industry by industry and country by country.

    Indians are often high skilled. Indians are one of the most geographically dispersed groups in the USA.

    Nurses probably go all over.

    Doctors have to go all over.

    The late Andy Isserman presented data a few decades ago showing that people from India were the most dispersed. People from the Dominican Republic were the most concentrated.

    Labor markets pull people in. But real estate prices and crime often push people out.

    For example, Metro Philly and metro Baltimore are full of immigrants who despaired of buying a house in a family friendly area of DC or NYC.

    I think we need more data.

  5. As an after thought, the Upper Middle Class is one of the most geographically mobile of all SES strata. I’m not sure what that tells us, a priori. They may move again, especially if they already moved to get to USA.

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