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No Place Like Home? Graduate Migration in Germany
Author(s) -
Haussen Tina,
Uebelmesser Silke
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
growth and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.657
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1468-2257
pISSN - 0017-4815
DOI - 10.1111/grow.12249
Subject(s) - graduation (instrument) , demographic economics , per capita , balance (ability) , demographics , work (physics) , net migration rate , panel data , higher education , geography , political science , economics , economic growth , economic geography , sociology , demography , psychology , population , econometrics , mechanical engineering , mathematics , geometry , neuroscience , engineering , population growth
The aim of this paper is to identify migration patterns of the highly educated, placing special emphasis on imbalances across regions. For this, we use data from a representative and longitudinal graduate survey in Germany with information about the work and migration history during the first 5 years after graduation. With regional funding of higher education, the number of graduates who leave the university region and the resulting net balance matter. It is equally important to understand whether economically weak and strong regions are affected differently and if graduates of study programs which are more or less costly to provide display different migration patterns. The findings show that stronger regions are more attractive for graduates. However, graduates of expensive study fields are less attached to their university region than graduates of inexpensive study fields if the university region has an above‐average GDP per capita. There is no evidence, however, that this also holds for regions with a below‐average GDP per capita. These weaker regions thus face a number effect, but there is no composition effect as far as the fields of study are concerned.