Global population movements from 1990 to 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Global population movements from 1990 to 2023

nature.com

106 pointstzury97 comments

https://www.socsc.hku.hk/rhps/global-migration/

Further down the page, there's a link to an article from a couple of years ago, titled "Migration isn’t increasing".

So which is it?

There's a quote from one of the study authors:

  "Because previous estimation methods relied on coarse five-year snapshots, 
   they yielded very few data points and created the impression that the rate 
   of global migration flows was stable," adds co-author Guy Abel, a research 
   scholar in the Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group of the 
   IIASA Population and Just Societies Program and professor at the University 
   of Hong Kong. "Our annual data provides a clearer picture, revealing that 
   this rate has actually risen since 2000. This upward trend appears to be 
   driven by long-term demographic shifts and economic development rather than 
   sudden, isolated crises."

So if I'm following correctly, when you look at coarse data, you miss a lot of the smaller-scale migration, and that small-scale migration pushes the totals up a lot?

Their dataset is so pathetically small you can't infer anything from it. There are still people alive from the India/Pakistan migration in 48 and that would be number one on this list

Fascinating to see that MENA is a net positive on migration. There's often a lot of rhetoric around MENA migration to Europe and North America, but you hear much less about migration to MENA countries.

I think people underestimate how many people move back to their home country once they have a better chance (through e.g. education or money) and / or when the situation there improves (e.g. stability). It's why I don't understand why the anti-immigration parties don't do more internationally to help other countries.

The reason why pouring money into countries that source immigrants is a questionable solution is graft.

Yes, pouring money may not be a very efficient solution and graft can certainly happen. For me it's a combination of how much graft do we allow if we take the long perspective and see it shrinking over time (maybe we dont allow any, cold turkey)? And what are ways we can help change the environments that may not be directly tied to money? From my perspective, we often need (and graft) money the most when we don't trust ourselves and others to help us. So are there ways we can help build deeper relationships so money is not the only focus or way people think they can get help?

Or move back to your home country once you've gained a beneficial citizenship and can have foreign government benefits paid out every month while you don't even live in that country anymore.

Perhaps. I think it's more about the passport ranking so one can travel and also the salary bump. But even if more of the other government services, try living in a country where if you get into a serious car accident you have to pay cash at the ER before they treat you. Scrambling to find multiple thousands of dollars in cash at 3am sometimes. (This happened to my friend in Kenya)

Im not sure if I can blame people for wanting to have more financial or medical security.

I think a very low percentage of migrants do it so that they can get a better passport for traveling. Sure, there are people who do that also.

Fair point. I also think the same group you're talking about is probably not thinking about going back home with just government benefits to sustain them. They probably are more focused on working in countries with higher wages and building big homes back home. I think it tends to be more wage driven than government benefit driven, but I could be wrong.

Is it legal to let people suffer or even die at the ER on Kenya if they don’t happen to carry a few k$?

Fair point, just looked it up and it seems to be illegal to do that. But in my experience, many probably still do it, or people don't trust that hospitals will follow the law...it may be more of that latter part, not knowing whether they will or won't ask you for money, or whether they will or won't take your insurance. So I think that uncertainty can mean having to be prepared for it anyway.

Probably a mix of all parts, also in Africa there are hospitals you would certainly try to avoid if you can.

What country pays out benefits to non-residents?

And if you pay taxes and social security for 20+ years why wouldn’t you be entitled to it? Especially considering you wouldn’t be using expensive programs like Medicare.

You don't have to pay taxes nor social security for 20+ years in order to become a citizen in very many countries. You can live on benefits before becoming a citizen and after becoming a citizen. Usually the requirement is that you are a resident for a set number of years in order to become a citizen.

> You can live on benefits before becoming a citizen and after becoming a citizen

What benefits? I don't know every country in the world, in Germany unless you count retirement as a benefit (which is something you pay for and have to reach a certain age that is ever moving upwards) you don't get any assistance if you're not living in the country.

When was the last time you were called to personally appear and report to the German government, so that they could verify that you are in the country, and not somewhere else?

Benefits aren't collected in cash, they are sent to bank accounts. The beneficiary can be anywhere.

Germany has address registration, you have to unregister if you leave the country for more than 3 months and having it inaccurate is a crime.

Oh, in Germany it is illegal to break the law? Good to know!

When were you last summoned, or visited at your adress by government officials to verify that you are where you said you'd be?

About the same time I was last summoned to make sure my house doesn't have a dead body.

And if they're suspicious, they can ask to check your passport for exit stamps, or receipts from your local supermarket, restaurant, bar, etc... Oh you pay cash and don't get receipts, let's see what the bank statement says which ATMs you withdraw your money from...

Most countries have contribution-tested benefits if not means-tested. You definitely can't fast-track citizenship and then start receiving benefits and fuck off.

Who's talking about fast tracking? It takes the time it takes. But once you are a citizen, receiving benefits requires much less. You can still receive a lot of benefits without being a citizen. You even have the right to receive benefits as an illegal alien. This in many European countries. And those of you who are typing replies before reading the entire comment, go and check the immigration authority websites of your own country first.

Any country that pays out benefits to bank accounts instead of cash-in-hand. When was the last time you as a citizen were summoned to appear in front of a government official so that they could verify that you are in the country.

My elderly British relatives have to prove every year that they are still alive (sworn statement by an official in their country of residence) if they want to keep drawing their government pension.

Of course pensions aren't contingent on being in-country, but I have trouble picturing the same bureaucracy being less anal about other government benefits.

Showing up once per year is easy to do, even if that's the only time you'll be in the country.

The UK will pay state pension if you live abroad: https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-if-you-retire-abroad

.. which is a contribution based benefit. There's a lot of (deliberate) confusion between pensions and "welfare" benefits, which are generally not available to either immigrants who have not achieved nationality or to overseas nationals.

People should cite more specific examples if they want to claim otherwise.

This was a primary goal (if not states) of USAID and related programs. Stem the causes of immigration, support stability, and create goodwill for the donor country.

Still imperialistic and self serving in many ways, but it worked.

On the other hand, I've recently talked with a Polish to US immigrant who was moving back to Poland this summer as jobs and more had improved. They were competitive (in his mind) with the lack of opportunity and anti immigrant thinking across the US today.

> It's why I don't understand why the anti-immigration parties don't do more internationally to help other countries.

Well, I think I can help you out with that...

The Gulf states take in a lot of migrant workers, who have basically no labour rights there.

https://www.ilo.org/regions-and-countries/arab-states/united...

"The UAE hosts some 8.7 million migrant workers – equivalent to over 80 per cent of the country’s resident population – making it one of the largest foreign labour-receiving countries in the world. With Emirati nationals mainly employed in the public sector, migrant workers constitute the bulk of private sector employment"

Yep. When I was in Kuwait, admittedly 20 years ago, there were a LOT of non-kuwaitis there as most manual labor jobs were done by foreign workers. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still the same today.

Isn't migration to MENA - specifically migration to North Africa mainly from Sub-Saharan part of Africa?

Saudi Arabia has one of the highest immigration populations on Earth, somewhere around 42% contrasted against 15.8% in the US (which is an all-time high). They offer huge wages for pretty much everything, have dirt cheap living costs, and like many Mideast countries - there's no taxes for individuals.

These are expats, not immigrants. They aren't welcome to become citizens in Saudi Arabia.

I'm not entirely clear that the migration dataset actually distinguishes between those cases?

My comment was based on Saudi Arabia's expat policy. Not on the dataset. Saudi Arabia doesn't welcome foreigners moving there to become citizens.

> Fascinating to see that MENA is a net positive on migration.

Really? it's a big economical hub now, the bulk of it migrate to a few countries, and in these countries just a few cities. It's a very different type of migration too.

https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl2616/files/2018-07/M...

As the article points out. The researcher’s site has an exploratory tool to view the data [1].

[1] https://www.socsc.hku.hk/rhps/global-migration/

If you pick 2023/2024 and the UK, you can see the disaster that is the Boris Wave.

Thoughts and prayers friend.

That tool could be interesting if there was a way to stop the rendered globe from spinning. As is, it is unusable

if you click and hold on a country, it stops spinning :)

Select the more options pulldown menu, click on projection, select ‘natural Earth’, no spinning.

and it accurately displays the Earth (flat) globecels btfo

Thanks! We'll put that link in the toptext as well.

Why has , recently, Pakistan been seen added more and more to a new category "MENAP" and separate from South Asia (i.e. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh) ?

These classifications should be geographic and could even racial, but it seems this new classification (MENAP) seems more "religious"

In America at least, all the hot deserty places between Europe and India=Middle East. I only started hearing the term "South Asia" to refer to places like Pakistan after encountering more non-Americans online. Afghanistan is also considered as part of the Middle East to basically every average American (hence why it's lumped in with all those "Middle Eastern wars"), but I'm not sure if it's seen that way in other areas.

Pakistan being “south asia” makes about as much sense as Turkey and Saudi Arabia being labeled “west asia”. Technically correct, odd choice for modern communication.

Pedantic response that makes light of a real issue. In case you haven't noticed, not every "western" country is actually in the western hemisphere.

Bangladesh is Muslim though

Probably because they have been getting closer to those countries, especially since India has started getting closer to Israel.

Interesting how South America, with several countries made up majorly of immigrants, receives almost no new migrants now.

Meanwhile the middle-east population is fleeing and being replaced with asians?

"fleeing" and "replaced" are loaded terms, I don't think you can derive that from this data. That said, there's a lot of workers being imported from Asia to the middle-east for their ambitious construction projects, could that explain it?

> Meanwhile the middle-east population is fleeing and being replaced with asians?

Persians brought Hinduism to India, so maybe they're returning the favour

Eh? Persians gave the name "Hindus" to the people living in that area. But they had their own religion, Zoroastrianism. They didn't bring Hinduism because they didn't have Hinduism.

Indians called it hinduism, but it came from iran.

It was then the shared pre-Zorastrian Indo-Aryan Vedic religion.

They're not sure on the name of it though it was likely they had a theme song that sounded familiar to Hanson's mmmbop

Uh. Zoroastrianism was a "reform" of Iran's Indo-Aryan religion that was closer to Vedic Hinduism.

Internal migration has mostly saturated capacity all accross the region in South America

It'll take a while until anyone relaxes

At least in Argentina that is because it's not the land of opportunities it used to be in the late 19th/early 20th century.

None of these regions have homogeneous conditions that mean anyone needs to be replacing fleeing locals to explain these stats. Millions of migrant workers are in the Gulf, and many of them come from the Philippines. Millions of people have fled conflicts in other parts of the Middle East.

Only 1.7m people left North America in 2023 (4.4m arrivals). Would be interesting to compare to figures from 2025.

> interesting

You have a funny way of spelling "sad" my friend.

US had net negative migration in 2025 for the first time in decades:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/14/immigra...

People who believe they are financially secure may move from regions which are considered “wealthy” to regions which are seen to be “poorer” (and cheaper). This outflow can influence this data.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/american-...

> This outflow can influence this data

Influence how? Migrations from wealthy to poor regions are still migrations, no?

They are... but the interpretation is different. They aren't looking for opportunity, at least not in the normal sense. And they aren't fleeing oppression in the normal sense either.

Can someone explain the graphic?

The graphic seems vague and not particularly revealing.

I was trying to figure out the inflow and outflow. It looks bidirectional.

Left to Right.

Leaving, Arriving.

In that case the observation is that North America is getting a more diverse set of immigrants

Is that not happening? I think up till 2026, it was diverse. The diagram doesn't seem incorrect.

I don’t think I was saying the diagram was incorrect

Europe and Central Asia added people. So did North America.

Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan was flat.

Other regions lost people.

*data doesn't go back beyond 2000, safe to ignore

???

Data quality issues usually get worse the further back you go.

Yes, but there are (in)famous examples such as the partition of Bengal (the tiger which Britain feared) being divided into Pakistan and India, which when included would provide a useful metric for the scale of human suffering involved.

That’s true, but very few countries in the world are willing to accept people as readily as they used to. Migration has become much more difficult since 2022, and I can say that as a migrant myself.

Here's the actual graph/data in question. The article is a dense academic snooooooozefest:

https://www.socsc.hku.hk/rhps/global-migration/

Ffs, trying to click on a country and the globe keeps rotating, hahah. When i click on nations, it doesn't tell me the numbers either, there's just these blobby lines :/

Not very usable.

Options -> change projection helps a little bit.

Thank you :)

Where are the maps?

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