Lant Pritchett
Development economist. Research director of RISE at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, formerly of the World Bank and the Harvard Kennedy School, and a founder of Labor Mobility Partnerships. He argues that letting people move across borders is the largest unexploited gain in global welfare, and that rich-country aid agencies have quietly abandoned the goal of making poor countries prosperous.
Lant Pritchett did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Hostility to migration is the last gasp of a dying system rather than the shape of the future.
Their wordsThe negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system and the transition to a more realistic approach.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 1st of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsWhen you separate those two questions in public dialogue, the negative attitudes disappear.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 2nd of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsGovernments should create three tracks for people who come to live in their country. One track is that of people who hope to become Spanish. Another is that of those who we are going to allow to live and work here; the third is that of those of we are going to allow to be in Spain out of necessity.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 3rd of 8 in this piece
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Our reading
Wanting to preserve a national culture is a legitimate human impulse and not in itself a racist one.
Their wordsValuing traditions, culture and history is simply a legitimate part of the human experience, and there is nothing wrong with preserving that.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 4th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsThe thing about the far-right parties is that they are trying to get people to equate all foreigners in a country with a threat to our future, but they are only gaining ground because of their ability to generate fear.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 5th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsBut once the demographics reverse, the challenge will be to find a person for every job. In the coming years, the impact of demographic changes is going to lead to chronic labor shortages.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 6th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsIn the absence of immigrants, between 2020 and 2050 Spain’s labor force (its active population) will drop from 22.6 to 15.7 million people. You’re not going to fill all the jobs needed in a modern and sophisticated economy like that of Spain’s with 15.7 million people.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 7th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsAccording to my numbers, in the United States there will be a net of 3.24 million new low-skill jobs, but there will also be 4.7 million fewer people in the labor force.
↗Lant Pritchett, economist: ‘Negativity around migration is the last breath of a moribund system’english.elpais.com 8th of 8 in this piece
- 9 months earlier
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Their wordsMy key argument is that in the current global economy we have some of the scarcest resources on the planet devoting themselves to economizing one of the most abundant resources on the planet.
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Their wordsThis is not because there are not people who would drive trucks for Amazon in the world, and not because “natural” scientific progress has made machines that drive trucks easy and cheap, but because in a global economy which is “flat” for capital, information, and goods, there is a legal “cliff at the border” for labor, as prices don’t reflect scarcity.
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Their wordsTherefore, we have the perverse situation that the richest people are hiring some of the most talented and technologically sophisticated people on the planet to engage in innovation aimed at driving down the demand for labor—the major and often only asset of the world’s poor.
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Their wordsBut, whether it makes financial sense or not for the individuals involved, they are responding to distorted prices, not scarcity, and the world is not better off from their invention and innovation.
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Our reading
Policy can manufacture a false necessity, and false necessity is the mother of wasteful invention.
Their wordsThere is an old saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” but it is also true that policies can create false necessity and false necessity can be the mother of costly, resource consuming, dumb inventions.
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Their wordsIf we collectively devoted the same levels of investment and inventive power and entrepreneurship to developing more and better legal pathways for people to move across borders to needed jobs, including a variety of modalities for labor mobility, we could solve the growing challenge of labor scarcity.