Leaving out of necessity or out of ambition? The impact of socio-economic development on factors of youth emigration from countries of South Eastern Europe

Abstract

Based on survey data from representative national samples of young people, we compared the impact of nine different factors of emigration desire among young people from 10 countries of Southeast Europe. The results show that (1) the impact of factors of necessity decreases with higher levels of Human Development Index (HDI), while factors of ambition tend to have stronger impact. We also found that across all 10 countries, (2) the experience of having been abroad is the strongest predictor of higher emigration desire, and that (3) the emigration desire of young people tends to decrease with higher levels of HDI.