What Lant Pritchett thinks about immigration
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.
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8 dated positions, 2023, in their own words. Our reading of what Lant Pritchett has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Our readingHostility 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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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 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 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 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.