New research by the Gallup Organization finds that 700 million people – 16 percent of the world’s total population – would like to move to a different country than the one they currently call home.
The first map below shows the percentages of people in various regions of the world that desire to permanently move to another country.
The second map shows the places these movers would most like to relocate to.
Gallup also compiled a very interesting index of potential net migration which compares “the estimated number of adults who would like to move out of a country permanently subtracted from the estimated number who would like to move to it,” as a proportion of the total population. Here are the top five and bottom five countries. Interestingly, the United States did not make the top five.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
You know why Saudi is so high? My buddy is working for Aramco and pulling in stupid amounts of money. He works stupid overtime to do it, but the work is there, the money is insane, and he’s as happy as can be doing it.
And he doesn’t pay US taxes, either. How would you like to pull in a quarter million dollars or more tax free? Plus have them pay to have your kids schooled at Exeter? Plus pay for a housing allowance, and a month’s vacation per year? Mandatory retirement at 60 with a cool company paid million dollars in your 401(k)?
This guy was over in the mideast in the early ’80s, during the last oil boom, so he’s familiar with the game. I think in the intervening decades, it has become less common for US citizens to work there, but it still draws Palestinians, Phillipinos, Indians, Brits, etc.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:21 am
It’s strange that the continents in the first are so uniform. Within Europe there are countries with pretty lousy living conditions (like Belarus and some other former parts of the Soviet Union). You’d expect that the willingness to move would be higher there. Same for some countries in South America.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
So, if Canada has a 170% it means that theoretically $59.5 million more people in the world want to move there rather than leave there.
Wow.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Friday, Gallup will release the entire list of countries in this study and their PNMI values — for a complete picture of what could happen if every adult worldwide who had the desire to move to another country actually got that chance.