Rethinking Replacement Migration

Andreea Beatrice Rusu , Cedeplar

Demographers were recently concerned about population growth and the fact that the world population would soon reach 10 billion people. Yet, global fertility is falling as the world population is ageing, resulting in higher proportions of elderly due to low fertility and increased longevity. In 2000, the UN published a report on replacement migration, as an answer to this demographic challenge, where the number of migrants needed to offset declines in population size, working-age population, and potential support ratio (PSR) were estimated for some developed countries. The report concluded that replacement migration alone cannot be a solution for ageing declining populations due to the large number of immigrants needed. In 2019, Craveiro et al. reviewed the UN methodology and introduced the concept of prospective-age into replacement migration estimations. Prospective-age considers the remaining life expectancy of individuals in order to define new age limits for elderly populations. Their results showed that the number of migrants needed to prevent the prospective working-age population and prospective PSR from declining was significantly lower than the UN estimates. What happens to other contexts, such as Romania or other countries that send large numbers of migrants to Western Europe? This project proposes to analyse replacement migration and its consequences in the Romanian context and how this process affects the dynamics of the country. First, it is necessary to rethink the theoretical framework of replacement migration by including the return migration and second, Romania’s net migration would have to turn positive as it is projected by EUROSTAT.

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 Presented in Session P2. Poster Session Ageing, Health and Mortality