An Outline of Skilled Emigration from Turkey to OECD Countries: A Panel Data Analysis

Abstract

Turkey provides rich evidence for the current international migration trends given its economic and demographic dynamics. The number of people moving overseas to settle permanently has been following an increasing trend in the recent decades, particularly remarkable for skilled and female groups. However, given the micro-level data limitations the migration outlook of Turkey is still quite bleak. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap and analyze the relationship between migration and human capital in the context of Turkish immigrants. First, aggregate trends of the Turkish emigrants in the 20 OECD destination countries by gender and educational level over the 1980-2010 period are examined using the IAB Brain Drain dataset. Next, a random effects panel estimation is applied to scrutinize the underlying dynamics of observed migration patterns adopting economic size, unemployment, demographic profile, urbanization and proximity as explanatory variables. The results reveal that gender, time and education are found as significantly related to international mobility trends, and the substantially left-skewedness of the distribution of Turkish emigrants along educational level is gradually fading away over time.