Migration to Australia and New Zealand vs. North America during the Age of Mass Migration

Historians refer to the period between about 1850 and the start of the First World War as 'The Age of Mass Migration' - a period when migration out of Europe expanded greatly, with over 40 million emigrants, going particularly to North America, but also to Australia and New Zealand and elsewhere. These huge migration flows substantially changed the demographics of the destinations, influencing these societies for generations to come. It is interesting, then, to look at the differences in migration flows going to different countries.

In a recent article published in the journal Australian Economic History Review (open access), Timothy Hatton (University of Essex) compares the migration flows from the UK (including Ireland) to the U.S., Canada and Australia/New Zealand (combined). He notes that:

From 1853 to 1913 the outflow of British citizens amounted to 12.9 million, 10.1 million of whom departed after 1870. Most of these passengers were emigrants travelling in the steerage compartments of emigrant ships. About three fifths of the emigrants were male, about three fifths were single and, among the adults, more than four fifths were aged 18-45 years. This represents a substantial labour migration of prime age adults, some of whom were travelling as families with children. They came from all parts of the United Kingdom with a particularly heavy concentration from Ireland, especially in the 1850s and 1860s. But there was also a substantial return flow. From 1871 to 1913 the cumulative net outflow amounted to 5.9 million, equivalent to 13.1% of the UK population in 1913...

Most of the UK emigrants travelled to four main destinations, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. From 1871 to 1913 these countries account for 88% for the gross outflow of UK citizens to extra-European ports and 93% of the net outflow.

Hatton then goes on to investigate the factors associated with the size of migration flows to the three destinations, using data from 1872 to 1913. He finds that:

the key forces are real wage rates, business cycle shocks as represented by deviations from trend GDP and network effects as captured by the stock of previous emigrants at a destination... The costs of passage seem to have little influence, perhaps because of measurement issues. But nearly half of the emigrants to Australia and New Zealand travelled on assisted passages, which brought the costs of travel to the antipodes closer to those for crossing the Atlantic. This seems to have been important in sustaining the flow to much more distant shores.

One of the more interesting (and perhaps surprising) aspects of the data is that it appears that the migrants to Australia and New Zealand were more skilled on average than migrants to North America. On this point, Hatton notes that:

Over the whole period, the percentage skilled is 64.0% for Australia and New Zealand, 38.7% for the United States and only 26.1% for Canada.

That is based on emigrants whose occupation was classified by the U.K. Board of Trade as "skilled trades". The results are similar if commercial and professional occupations are also included. As for the reason why, it might be attractive to suggest that assisted passage helped. However, using a model of the skilled share of migration, Hatton concludes that:

It is also likely that the larger network of previous migrants in the United States provided more opportunities for emigration among the unskilled, which would be consistent with the negative coefficients on the emigrant stock. Weaker network effects, due to the smaller emigrant stock, would help to explain the higher skill content of emigration to Australia/New Zealand compared with the United States (but not with Canada). But one thing that does not explain the difference in migrant skills is assisted migration, which, if anything, reduced the skill content of migration from the United Kingdom to Australia and New Zealand.

Migration involves a cost to the migrant. Unskilled workers are generally less able to pay that cost. However, part of the cost is integrating into the destination society (getting a job, housing, etc.), and that component of the cost is reduced if the migrant has a larger social network in the destination to take advantage of. The larger social network of unskilled (particularly Irish) migrants in the U.S. appears to have made North America more attractive as a destination for unskilled migrants than Australia or New Zealand, leading to more skilled migration flows to the antipodes (on average). It also helps to explain the relative lack of Irish heritage in Australia and New Zealand (in comparison with the U.S).