Azernews.Az

Wealthier individuals seek to migrate from their home countries more often than poorer people, a poll by the US Gallup organization has found.
Although wealthier people may be more likely to express a desire to migrate from any given country, the desire to migrate is also high among populations in poorer countries as compared to richer countries. In countries that are at the bottom quarter in worldwide GDP, desired migration rates are about twice as high as they are in countries in the top quarter of GDP, the poll found.
This association between personal wealth and the desire to migrate is stronger in countries with lower GDPs as compared to countries with higher GDPs. In the world's poorest countries there is an eight-percentage-point gap in the desire to migrate between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent of the population. In the world's richest countries, this difference is only four points.
The perceptions of people vary based upon an individual's world outlook and views. But the overall picture is that immigrants tend to flow from poor to wealthy countries.
The poll divided countries into four groups based upon their Gross Domestic Product. In the list, prepared based upon estimates issued by the World Bank in 2006, Azerbaijan was cited among countries ranking second from the bottom, which is one grade above underdeveloped nations. The same rating was assigned to Armenia, Cambodia, Ecuador, and India.
Azerbaijani officials deny that a high rate of migration among its citizens occurs. However, representatives of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party say emigrating citizens, for the most part, have expectations of better living standards.
Azer Mehdiyev, of the Economic Research Center, said those leaving the country are concerned "not over their current situation but over what will happen tomorrow."
Gallup said their polling results indicate poor people may have limited exposure to information that would foster a desire to migrate, including basic information about other countries. In this Gallup Poll data, for example, only 25 percent of the poorest people in the world's poorest countries report that they have a television in their homes.
According to the poll, taking into account that wealthier people tend to be more educated, these findings may speak to the problem of "brain drain" that plagues many poor countries. Indeed, in some poor countries the majority of those who earn a college degree may eventually leave. For instance, according to the Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008, the emigration rate among college graduates in Belize is 51 percent. In Guyana, Jamaica, and Haiti this figure exceeds 80 percent. This may be good news for those countries to which such educated people move, but it is bad news for the migrants' home countries.
The Gallup Polls further show that those who wish to migrate may be better off financially than many people assume.
The survey builds on telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted in 2007 with some 1,000 adults per country.