Bernardí Cabrer, Guadalupe Serrano y Rocío Simarro

Migratory flows and human capital mobility

This paper focuses on estimating interregional human capital migration flows in Spain, based on the assumption of key hypothesis on data and temporal characteristics of educated population migration flows. The results point to the increasing intensity of medium and high educated gross migration flows and confirm Madrid, the Basque Country and Catalonia as the three main independent poles of attraction and emission for educated migrants. Likewise, there is a reasonable concordance between education levels of immigrants and the needs for educated workers in Spanish regions. However, the average amount of years of study within the active population in the region is increasing while that of the immigrants remains unaltered, thus immigration seemed not to be a key factor in reducing regional inequalities in human capital endowments.

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