Catch-Up and Come Home: Economic Convergence and Return Migration

Abstract

The return migration of skilled workers provides origin countries many important benefits. The likelihood of return migration is thought to depend on relative economic opportunities, but quantitative evidence of its relative importance remains limited. Here we measure return migration rates using the public profiles of software developers on GitHub, geocoded across ten waves between 2012 and 2026, in a panel containing more than 270,000 international movers. Within five years of departure, 8.8% of movers have returned. Origin-country rates range from under 1\% to 16\%. Hazard models with corridor fixed effects show that migrants whose home countries experience greater catch-up growth return at significantly higher rates. Immutable features of country pairs such as cultural or geographic distance do not explain the estimate. We forecast future return rates using IMF growth projections, predicting, for example, that India's return rate will rise 12\% by 2035 and China's 7\%. The difference is driven mostly by India's faster projected growth at home. As developing economies close income gaps with the destinations their emigrants have settled in, they recover more of the workers they lost.