Jeni Klugman, director of the United Nations Development
Programme’s Human Development Report Office, visited NYU Wagner
on November 19, 2009, and spoke to an audience about this year’s
Human Development Report, of which the theme is migration. In
her talk, Klugman presented the key message of the report:
overall, migration creates aggregate benefits for receiving
countries and migrants. Broader dimensions of how people fair
beyond income, including health and education, were also
examined in the report, she noted. Though, on average, migrants
experience a three to four-fold increase in income, they also
usually gain in health and education indicators as well. Some
surprising facts were that the number of migrants as a
percentage of the world’s population is the same as it has been
since 1960–roughly three percent. Furthermore, most migration
actually occurs within borders rather than between countries.
Contrary to popular though, migration from developing to
developed countries actually accounts for only 30%