Modelling of the impact of emigrants’ qualification structure on the national economic growth : the case of Lithuania

Abstract

Over the past decade significantly increased flows of emigration from Lithuania pointed out the relevance of emigration impact assessment on the national economic growth, as the country is losing economic, scientific, technical, innovative potential. Emigration has become one of the most important and controversial recent economic and political subject of discussions, however impact of different qualification groups on the national economic growth has not been emphasized. This is an important aspect of the research, because impact of migration on the national economic growth in the macroeconomic level depends on the political, economic and social conditions as well as on the individual characteristics of emigrants, their owned capital and behaviour. Therefore this paper presents the integrated assessment model of the impact of emigrants’ qualification structure on the national economic growth, which has been applied in the case of Lithuania. Emigration impact was assessed through the aggregated cost components, therefore GDP expenditure method has been chosen because it allows to identify systemically expenditure groups related to the economic growth through the incoming and outgoing cash flows which is determined by the emigrants’ role in every economic sector The calculation results showed that increase in part of qualified emigrants negatively influenced national economic growth during the whole analysed period. The biggest negative effect came from the change of consumption expenditure while the positive effect from the saved social benefits did not overcome the negative one. The calculations showed that the change of 10 per cent of emigrants’ qualification structure determined on average of 5 per cent of the GDP loss change in the country.