International migration flow table estimation

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Description/Abstract

A methodology is developed to estimate comparable international migration
flows between
a set of countries. International migration
flow data may be missing, reported by
the sending country, reported by the receiving country or reported by both the sending and
receiving countries. For the last situation, reported counts rarely match due to differences
in defnitions and data collection systems. In this thesis, reported counts are harmonized
using correction factors estimated from a constrained optimization procedure. Factors are
applied to scale data known to be of a reliable standard, creating an incomplete migration

flow table of harmonized values. Cells for which no reliable reported
flows exist are
then estimated from a negative binomial regression model fitted using the Expectation-
Maximization (EM) type algorithm. Covariate information for this model is drawn from
international migration theory. Finally, measures of precision for all missing cell estimates
are derived using the Supplemented EM algorithm. Recent data on international migration
between countries in Europe are used to illustrate the methodology. The results
represent a complete table of comparable
ows that can be used by regional policy makers
and social scientist alike to better understand population behaviour and change.