Paper Walls Are Easier to Tear Down: Passport Costs and Legal Barriers to Emigration DAVID MCKENZIE * The World Bank, USA Summary. — New data collected on passport costs in 127 countries reveal enormous variation. One in every 10 countries have passport costs exceeding 10% of annual per capita income. High passport costs are found to be associated with poor governance, especially in terms of the quality of the bureaucracy, and with lower levels of migration. Countries which place legal restrictions on the rights of women to emigrate are also found to have lower migration rates. This suggests scope for developing countries to receive greater migration benefits by tearing down the paper walls they place around their own citizens. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. JEL classification — O15, F22 Key words — migration, passport costs, barriers to exit, world 1. INTRODUCTION The importance of international migration for development has received increasing atten- tion from both the research and policy commu- nities. The UN Global Commission on International Migration recently issued a com- prehensive report calling for greater consulta- tion and cooperation between states and greater attention to the rights and integration needs of migrants once they arrive (GCIM, 2005). The World Bank has devoted its 2006 Global Economic Prospects report to remit- tances and migration, and emphasizes the importance of competition and regulation for lowering the cost of sending money transfers. Ambitious calls for greater freedom of move- ment under GATS Mode 4 negotiations, tem- porary worker programs, and other forms of bilateral or global cooperation have become part of the global policy debate. However, far less attention has been given to barriers that countries place in the way of their own citizens who wish to emigrate. The right to emigrate is enshrined in Article 13 of the Uni- versal Declaration of Human Rights, 1 but there remains a sizeable number of countries who place legal restrictions on exit, especially in the case of women. Even when no legal restrictions are in place, countries can put a sizeable burden on potential migrants through the imposition of large passport fees, and cum- bersome procedures for obtaining a passport. However, little is known about the size of such fees across countries or their importance for migration. This paper presents new data collected on passport costs in 127 countries around the world and documents the large amount of het- erogeneity in costs across countries. The cost of a passport is found to range from $0 to $333, 2 and from 0% to 125% of annual per capita na- tional income. Passport costs as a share of na- tional income are higher in poorer countries, and in countries with worse measures of gover- nance, in particular, in countries with poor bureaucracy. High passport costs are found to be associated with lower levels of migration, suggesting scope for increasing migration through domestic policy reform. Evidence on the time costs of obtaining a passport shows differences across countries as to whether or not a passport can be obtained by post rather than in person, and in the time taken for processing a passport. High fees for expedited service are the indications of the de- mand for more rapid processing in many coun- tries. In addition to passport costs, this study documents legal restrictions on exit, such as Final revision accepted: November 27, 2006. World Development Vol. 35, No. 11, pp. 2026–2039, 2007 Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved 0305-750X/$ - see front matter www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2006.11.009 2026
Transcript
World Development Vol. 35, No. 11, pp. 2026–2039, 2007� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Summary. — New data collected on passport costs in 127 countries reveal enormous variation. Onein every 10 countries have passport costs exceeding 10% of annual per capita income. High passportcosts are found to be associated with poor governance, especially in terms of the quality of thebureaucracy, and with lower levels of migration. Countries which place legal restrictions on therights of women to emigrate are also found to have lower migration rates. This suggests scopefor developing countries to receive greater migration benefits by tearing down the paper walls theyplace around their own citizens.� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
JEL classification — O15, F22Key words — migration, passport costs, barriers to exit, world
�Final revision accepted: November 27, 2006.
1. INTRODUCTION
The importance of international migrationfor development has received increasing atten-tion from both the research and policy commu-nities. The UN Global Commission onInternational Migration recently issued a com-prehensive report calling for greater consulta-tion and cooperation between states andgreater attention to the rights and integrationneeds of migrants once they arrive (GCIM,2005). The World Bank has devoted its 2006Global Economic Prospects report to remit-tances and migration, and emphasizes theimportance of competition and regulation forlowering the cost of sending money transfers.Ambitious calls for greater freedom of move-ment under GATS Mode 4 negotiations, tem-porary worker programs, and other forms ofbilateral or global cooperation have becomepart of the global policy debate.
However, far less attention has been given tobarriers that countries place in the way of theirown citizens who wish to emigrate. The right toemigrate is enshrined in Article 13 of the Uni-versal Declaration of Human Rights, 1 butthere remains a sizeable number of countrieswho place legal restrictions on exit, especiallyin the case of women. Even when no legalrestrictions are in place, countries can put asizeable burden on potential migrants through
202
the imposition of large passport fees, and cum-bersome procedures for obtaining a passport.However, little is known about the size of suchfees across countries or their importance formigration.
This paper presents new data collected onpassport costs in 127 countries around theworld and documents the large amount of het-erogeneity in costs across countries. The cost ofa passport is found to range from $0 to $333, 2
and from 0% to 125% of annual per capita na-tional income. Passport costs as a share of na-tional income are higher in poorer countries,and in countries with worse measures of gover-nance, in particular, in countries with poorbureaucracy. High passport costs are found tobe associated with lower levels of migration,suggesting scope for increasing migrationthrough domestic policy reform.
Evidence on the time costs of obtaining apassport shows differences across countries asto whether or not a passport can be obtainedby post rather than in person, and in the timetaken for processing a passport. High fees forexpedited service are the indications of the de-mand for more rapid processing in many coun-tries. In addition to passport costs, this studydocuments legal restrictions on exit, such as
6
PAPER WALLS ARE EASIER TO TEAR DOWN 2027
requirements that citizens obtain exit visas orthat women receive the permission of their hus-band or father to travel. Countries with restric-tions on travel are shown to have lower rates ofmigration than countries of similar populationand income levels without such restrictions.
Overall, the evidence does suggest that thereare real barriers placed in the way of emigrationin a number of countries. Countries that wishto benefit from remittances, diaspora, technol-ogy transfer, return migration from trainedcountries, and other developmental impacts ofmigration can start by tearing down the paperwalls they put around their own citizens.
The remainder of the paper is structured asfollows: Section 2 presents summary statisticson the passport data, Section 3 examines therelationship between passport costs and mea-sures of governance, and Section 4 then relatesthe per capita migrant stock of a country topassport costs and other determinants ofmigration. Section 5 summarizes the evidenceon the time costs involved in obtaining a pass-port, Section 6 documents a number of legalrestrictions on emigration and their relation-ship with migrant stock, and Section 7 con-cludes.
2. PASSPORT COSTS AROUND THEWORLD
Data on the cost of a passport in the countryof issue was collected in October 2005. Theprincipal form of collection was through faxes,emails, and telephone calls to the consular offi-ces of each country having an embassy or con-sulate office in the United States. Other sourcesof information included websites of passportauthorities, telephone calls, and faxes to the rel-evant government ministry in charge of issuingpassports in countries, and through staff inWorld Bank country offices. Passport costswere collected in local currency, and convertedinto USDs at the prevailing interbank exchangerate. 3 After several follow-up attempts, datawere able to be collected for passport costs in127 countries.
In many countries, there is no single passportcost. Passport costs may differ for children andadults, for first-time passports compared torenewals, and for expedited service comparedto regular service. Several countries also offerthe options as to the duration of the passport(e.g., 1, 5, or 10 years) and as to the numberof pages (e.g., Rs. 1,000 ($22.29) for a 36 page
book or Rs. 1,500 ($33.44) for a 60 page bookin India). 4 Since the availability of these addi-tional features differs across countries, an at-tempt was made to standardize, by collectingthe price of a first-time adult passport validfor a five year duration, of the standard numberof pages, and obtained via the standard pro-cessing period. When the country only issuesa 10-year passport, this is the price reported. 5
The cost collected contains the cost of thepassport itself, but not the cost of paying forphotographs, birth certificates, or other suchdocuments which are required along with thepassport application. These other costs areharder to measure, but at least some of themare likely to be high in poor countries withweak bureaucracies. For example, UNICEF(2005) reports that more than half of all birthsin developing countries are unregistered. Insuch cases, obtaining a passport will first in-volve getting a birth record.
The full list of countries and passport costsare provided in Appendix A. Figure 1 showsa histogram of passport prices. It shows a widevariation in passport costs across the world.The majority of passports cost less thanUS$50, with a median cost of $38.60, the pre-vailing cost in Guatemala and Samoa. How-ever, a number of countries charge over $100and others charge less than $10. Table 1 liststhe 10 least expensive and 10 most expensivecountries. There is substantial geographic andeconomic heterogeneity amongst these. Pass-ports are free in Armenia, only $4.74 in Swazi-land, and $4.83 in Luxembourg. Turkey,Lebanon, and Chad are the most expensive,with a 5-year passport in Turkey costing$333. Turkey does also offer a one-year pass-port for $130.53, and Lebanon offers a one-yearpassport for $40.
Figure 2 shows that there is a general ten-dency for passport costs to rise with per capitaincomes: an OLS regression of log passportcost on log income per capita shows that a10% increase in per capita national income isassociated with a 1.1% increase in the cost ofa passport. The slope is significantly differentfrom zero at the 5% level (t statistic of 2.34).However, Figure 2 also shows a large amountof variation around the OLS line, showing sub-stantial differences in passport pricing policiesacross countries with similar income levels.
One might expect high passport costs to havemuch less affect on ability to migrate in high-in-come countries than in low-income countries.In particular, the cost of a passport relative to
010
2030
40
Freq
uenc
y
0 100 200 300 400Cost of Passport (US$)
Figure 1. Histogram of passport prices.
Table 1. Least and most expensive passports (cost in USDs)
Least expensive 10 countries Most expensive 10 countries
Armenia 0.00 Turkey 333.57Swaziland 4.74 Lebanon 200.00Luxembourg 4.83 Chad 156.40Botswana 5.34 Norway 152.34Kenya 5.37 Democratic Republic of Congo 150.00Ghana 5.45 Denmark 145.67Guyana 6.30 Bosnia and Herzegovina 143.72Czech Republic 8.04 Croatia 129.73Philippines 8.95 Australia 115.22El Salvador 9.14 United States 97.00
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income may determine whether individuals areable to migrate or not. We therefore standard-ize passport costs by per capita Gross NationalIncome in 2004, taken from the World Devel-opment Indicators of the World Bank. 6 Table2 then lists the 23 countries in our sample inwhich a passport costs 5% or more of annualper capita income. The most expensive passportrelative to income occurs in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo where a passport costs125% of per capita income. 7 Eleven out ofthe 14 countries where passport costs are 10%or more of annual per capita income are lo-cated in Africa. Nevertheless, other Africancountries manage to maintain low costs: pass-port costs are only 1.4% of per capita income
in Ghana, 1.17% in Kenya, 0.3% in Swaziland,and 0.12% in Botswana.
3. WHAT DETERMINES PASSPORTCOSTS?
Passport costs which are high relative to in-come are likely to act as a barrier to the abilityof citizens to migrate. The question which thenarises is why they are so high. One possibleexplanation is that passport costs are high rela-tive to income in poorly governed countries.This may be due to poor capacity to efficientlycarry out bureaucratic procedures, a repres-sive desire to stop citizens traveling, or to the
12
34
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Log
Cos
t (U
S$)
4 6 8 10 12Log GDP per capita
Log Cost of a Passport OLS line
Figure 2. Passport costs and per capita income.
Table 2. Countries where a passport costs 5% or more of annual per capita income
% pcGNI % pcGNI
Democratic Republic of Congo 125.0 Cameroon 11.4Chad 60.2 Nigeria 10.0Burundi 50.9 Turkey 8.9Rwanda 41.5 Mauritania 8.7Ethiopia 31.1 Benin 8.6Nepal 26.3 Republic of Congo 8.5Niger 19.8 Bosnia and Herzegovina 7.0Central African Republic 17.7 Bolivia 6.7Tanzania 13.4 The Gambia 6.0Tajikistan 13.4 Papua New Guinea 5.3Burkina Faso 12.7 Bangladesh 5.2Lao PDR 11.8
pcGNI = annual per capita gross national income.
PAPER WALLS ARE EASIER TO TEAR DOWN 2029
inability to collect government revenue throughstandard taxation procedures. To investigatethe relationship between passport costs andgovernment, we employ the Governance IVindicators for the year 2004 from Kaufmann,Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2005). 8 They presentindicators for the following six dimensions ofgovernance:
(1) Voice and accountability: a measure ofpolitical, civil, and human rights, includingthe ability of citizens to participate in selec-tion of a Government and mediaindependence.
(2) Political stability and lack of violence: ameasure of the likelihood of the governmentin power being overthrown by violent orunconstitutional means.(3) Government effectiveness: a measure ofthe quality of public service provision, andthe competence of the bureaucracy.(4) Regulatory quality: a measure of theincidence of market unfriendly policies andexcessive regulation.(5) Rule of law: a measure of the quality ofcontract enforcement, the incidence ofcrime, and the quality of the judiciary.
Table 3. Do Countries with better governance have lower passport costs?
Dependent variable: log(passport cost).Robust t statistics in parentheses.* Significant at the 10% level.** Significant at the 5% level.*** Significant at the 1% level.
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PAPER WALLS ARE EASIER TO TEAR DOWN 2031
(6) Control of corruption: a measure of theuse of public power for private gain, includ-ing both petty and grand corruption.
Each of the indicators is scaled to have a meanof zero and standard deviation of one, withhigher scores representing better governance.Regulatory quality and government effective-ness appear to best capture the idea that costsmay be high due to poor capacity to efficientlycarry out bureaucratic procedures and aninability to collect government revenue throughother taxation. The voice and accountabilitymeasure captures the alternative view that costsare high due to government repression.
Table 3 presents the results of regressing thelog of the cost of a passport on a quadratic inlog per capita income and on these measuresof governance. The governance measures arequite highly correlated with one another, witha single principal component explaining 88%of the variance in the six variables. 9 We there-fore include each measure separately beforeincluding them jointly.
Columns 2–7 of Table 3 show that each ofthe different governance measures has a nega-tive coefficient when entered separately, andall are significant except for voice and account-ability. This shows that higher passport pricesrelative to income are associated with worsegovernance, and that this appears more relatedto incompetence of the bureaucracy and over-regulation than to direct government repres-sion. The largest magnitudes are seen forgovernment effectiveness and regulatory qual-ity, measuring the quality of the bureaucracy.A one standard deviation improvement in gov-ernment effectiveness (e.g., moving from Chad’slevel to Brazil’s level) is associated with a 0.433log point lower log passport cost. 10 At themean log cost of 3.64, this equates to a 14%drop in the passport cost. Passport costs rela-tive to income are also higher in countries withless political stability and more corruption.When we include all of the measures togetherin column 8, only regulatory quality is signifi-cant at the 5% level.
An alternative explanation for the high costsof passports in some countries is that they are away of extracting rents from the migration ofhighly skilled (high income) workers. If policy-makers set passport costs high in order to ex-tract income from such workers, we shouldsee higher passport costs in countries with highlevels of skilled emigration. To test, Column 9of Table 3 includes the highly skilled emigra-tion rate, taken from Docquier et al. (2005).
The coefficient on high-skilled migration isinsignificant, and the sign shows that, if any-thing, countries with higher skilled migrationlevels have lower passport costs. 11 This resultcontinues to hold in column 10 once gover-nance controls are also included. The evidencetherefore does not support the view that highpassport costs are set in order to extract rentsfrom highly skilled high-income migrants.
4. ARE HIGH PASSPORT COSTS ABARRIER TO MIGRATION?
The previous two sections have shown thatpassport costs are high relative to per capita in-come in some countries, and that one explana-tion for high passport costs is poor governance.We now turn to examining whether high pass-port costs act as a barrier to migration. We em-ploy migration stock data based on country ofbirth from version 4 of the bilateral migrationstock database of Parsons, Skeldon, Walmsley,and Winters (2005). This quantifies migrationstock based largely on the population censusestaken in 2000–01. 12 We then calculate emigra-tion stock as a percentage of each countriespopulation in 2000.
Passport costs are clearly of most direct rele-vance for legal migration. The migration datawe use include both legal emigrants and illegalemigrants who fill in census forms in their des-tination countries. While many illegal migrantsenter without any documents, others enter leg-ally on tourist visas and then overstay. The costof a passport will be one factor as to whether apotential migrant chooses this latter method.Likewise, in theory the cost of a passport willenter into the decision of whether to migratelegally or illegally. Therefore, we concentrateour analysis on the impact of passport costson the total emigrant stock, regardless ofwhether or not it is legal. 13 We will then exam-ine robustness by looking at legal emigrationflows.
Figure 3 plots the relationship between theproportion of emigrants a country has and itspassport costs. The figure is truncated at pass-port costs of 20% of per capita income, effec-tively dropping the six most expensivecountries in Table 2. 14 There is a clear negativerelationship, with countries with higher pass-port costs having fewer emigrants. The onlycountry with emigrant share above 10% of thepopulation among those countries with pass-port costs above 5% of per capita income is
020
4060
80M
igra
nts
per c
apita
(%)
0 5 10 15 20Passport Cost/per capita income (%)
Figure 3. Higher passport costs are associated with less emigrants.
Table 4. Do countries with higher passport costs have less emigrants?
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Passport cost as % of GNI �0.272 �0.156 �0.544 �0.757 �0.422(4.09)*** (2.37)** (2.34)** (3.95)*** (1.51)
Passport cost as % of GNI squared 0.011 0.005(3.17)*** (1.17)
Log of population �3.700 �3.688 �3.671(5.64)*** (5.68)*** (5.63)***
Log of GNI per capita 2.193 1.823 1.805(1.71)* (1.28) (1.25)
Government effectiveness �3.840 �4.023 �3.734(1.97)* (2.01)** (1.89)*
Trimmed sample No No <20% No Nop-Value for test of joint significance: 0.000 0.083Observations 124 124 119 124 124R-squared 0.04 0.45 0.45 0.06 0.45
Notes: Robust t statistics in parentheses.Column 3 trims countries with passport costs which are above 20% of per capita national income.Dependent variable: emigrants per capita (%).* Significant at the 10% level.** Significant at the 5% level.*** Significant at the 1% level.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina, a clear outlier on thegraph. The high emigrant share for this countryis likely a result of large refugee migration as aresult of the civil war in the mid-1990s.
Table 4 then examines how robust the rela-tionship seen in Figure 3 is to the inclusion of
other determinants of migration which mayalso be correlated with passport costs. Column1 shows that the negative relationship seen inFigure 3 is significant, although passport costsonly explain a small fraction of the variationin migration. Column 2 adds log population,
PAPER WALLS ARE EASIER TO TEAR DOWN 2033
log national income per capita, and govern-ment effectiveness as controls. The addition ofthese controls causes the coefficient on passportcosts to fall in magnitude, but it remains signif-icant. This helps in part account for the concernthat passport costs are just proxying for otherbarriers to exit caused by poor governmenteffectiveness, such as the cost of obtaining birthcertificates or health certifications.
One potential concern is that the relationshipin Figure 3 appears nonlinear, and one maywonder whether all the results are being drivenby countries with extremely high passportcosts. We explore this nonlinearity in two ways:Column 3 of Table 4 drops countries in whichpassport costs are higher than 20% of per capi-ta annual income, and shows that the magni-tude of the coefficient on passport costsactually increases in absolute value. Columns4 and 5 add a quadratic term in passport costsas a percentage of per capita annual income.Both specifications show evidence for a nonlin-ear effect, with a stronger effect of passportcosts on emigrant stock when passport costsare below extremely high values. For countrieswith passport costs less than 20% of nationalincome, we estimate that lowering passportcosts by 1% is associated with a 0.75% increasein emigrants per capita. Countries with very
Table 5. Do countries with higher pas
(1)
Passport cost as % of GNI �0.002(2.60)**
Passport cost as % of GNI squared (*100)
Log of population
Log of GNI per capita
Government effectiveness
Constant 0.118(5.45)***
Trimmed sample Nop-value for test of joint significance:Observations 127R-squared 0.01
Notes: Robust t statistics in parentheses.Dependent variable: emigrant flow per capita to United StColumn 3 trims countries with passport costs which are ab* Significant at the 10% level.** Significant at the 5% level.*** Significant at the 1% level.
high migration costs have less impact from a1% decrease, since costs still remain very high.They therefore require greater reductions incosts to boost migrant numbers.
This analysis has examined the relationshipbetween the stock of emigrants a country hasand its current passport cost. The advantageof the emigrant stock measure is that it is basedon national census and household survey datain many countries around the world. It there-fore captures most of the world’s legal and ille-gal migration. The disadvantage of thismeasure is that if passport costs change at dif-ferent rates across countries over time, then to-day’s passport prices may not be reflective ofthe relative prices prevailing at the time of emi-gration. Detailed migration flow data are evenrarer than migration stock data, 15 and so werestrict our analysis to legal emigration flowinto the four traditional settlement countriesof the United States, Canada, Australia, andNew Zealand. 16 The total migration flow intothese four countries in 2004 is then expressedas a percentage of the sending countries 2004population. The correlation between the emi-grant stock of a country and the flow into thesefour countries for our sample is 0.833.
Table 5 then repeats Table 4, using legal emi-grant flow rather than total emigrant stock as
ates, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in 2004 (%).ove 20% of per capita national income.
2034 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
the dependent variable. The median flow intothe four traditional settlement countries in2004 was only 0.02% of the sending countrypopulation. Passport costs as a share of per ca-pita annual income are found to be significantlyrelated to legal emigration flows, in a nonlinearfashion. The size of the estimated effect is quitelarge: among countries with passport costs lessthan 20% of per capita annual income, drop-ping from the 75th percentile of passport costs(2.5% of income) to the median (0.77% of in-come) is associated with a 0.024% increase, ordoubling, of the emigration flow.
Tables 4 and 5 have shown that countrieswith higher passport costs relative to incomehave lower stocks and flows of emigrants percapita, and that this finding is robust to theinclusion of a number of additional variablessuch as income and governance which mightbe correlated with both emigration and pass-port costs. Nevertheless, one should still becautious not to interpret this result as necessar-ily showing that higher passport costs cause lessmigration to take place. A possible concernmay be that the number of migrants a countryhas determines the government’s decision onhow much to charge for a passport. 17 A largenumber of migrants may be able to exert polit-ical pressure on governments to keep passportcosts low, or alternatively governments maysee high passport costs as a way of extractingtaxes from a large pool of migrants. 18 Furtherresearch is needed to understand the politicaleconomy of passport pricing.
5. TIME COSTS AND PASSPORTS
In addition to financial costs, there are alsolarge differences across countries in the timecosts involved in obtaining a passport. For 42countries, we were also able to collect informa-tion on whether a first-time passport must beobtained in person, or whether it could be ob-tained by mailing the appropriate documentsand fees. A quarter of the countries providingthis information allow the passport to be ob-tained by mail (examples include Brazil, Mauri-tius, the Philippines, New Zealand, and SriLanka). The majority of countries require theircitizens to present themselves in person to ap-ply for a passport. 19 While there may be secu-rity reasons for requiring this, it does involve anadditional cost for the potential migrant. Thisis particularly the case in countries where pass-port-issuing offices are only located in major
cities, and so individuals living outside majorcities must travel possibly long distances to ap-ply for their passport. As an example, prior tothe decentralization of passport issuing, citizensof Nepal had to travel to Kathmandu to obtaina passport. For people living in some areas ofNepal, this required crossing mountain ranges,clearly providing a major barrier to obtaining apassport.
The second type of time cost faced is the timetaken for a passport to be issued after applyingfor it. This too varies widely across countries.The following are the reported processing timesfor a standard passport issue in selected coun-tries: El Salvador 45 min, Pakistan 8 days,New Zealand 10 days, Australia 10 days, Ire-land 2 weeks, Ghana 1 month, Bulgaria 1month, India 5 weeks, South Africa 6 weeks,United States 6 weeks. Many countries offerthe option of an expedited processing time foran extra payment. For example, Ghana charges50,000 cedis ($5.45) for 1 month, 500,000 cedis($54.45) for one week, and 1,000,000 cedis($108.90) for 1 day’s waiting period. Bulgariacharges 30 leva ($18.33) for one month’s pro-cessing time, and 150 leva ($91.65) for oneday’s processing time. Long waits may also giverise to corruption with passport-issuing officialsaccepting bribes for faster processing. Forexample, witnesses in a Parliamentary hearingin Namibia testified that many of the pass-port-issuing officials would frequently shuttheir offices for personal business, leading tomonths long waits for passports and bribes offour times the cost of a passport for faster ser-vice (Philander, 2005). Although we are unableto quantify the impact of long waiting times onmigration, the existence of fees up to 20 timesthe regular price for more rapid service doesshow that there is certainly a demand for moreefficient processing.
6. LEGAL BARRIERS TO EMIGRATION
In addition to price barriers, citizens in sev-eral countries also face legal barriers to obtain-ing a passport and to traveling out of theircountry. Table 6 details the 17 countries whichplace restrictions on the ability of women tolegally obtain a passport or to travel out oftheir country. These restrictions take the formof preventing unmarried women traveling with-out the permission of their father or adult rela-tive, and of married women traveling withoutthe permission of their husband. Such legal
Table 7. Do restrictions on women reduce migration?
(1) (2)
Restrictions on womenemigrating
�5.956 �5.344
(3.30)*** (3.49)***
Log of GNI per capita 3.001 12.139(3.57)*** (3.80)***
Log of population �3.073 �19.390(5.34)*** (3.18)***
Government effectiveness �3.421 �1.456(2.38)** (0.94)
Log of GNI per capitasquared
�0.653
(2.81)***
Log of population squared 0.535(2.89)***
Constant 32.744 125.053(3.27)*** (2.40)**
Observations 170 170R-squared 0.37 0.47
Dependent variable: migrants per capita (%).Robust t statistics in parentheses.*Significant at the 10% level.** Significant at the 5% level.*** Significant at the 1% level.
Table 6. Walling their women in
Married women require their husband’s permission Restrictions on both married and unmarried women
but no restriction on unmarried women AfghanistanAlgeria (women under 18) IranDemocratic Republic of Congo JordanGabon Kuwait (unmarried women under 21)Uganda (when traveling with children) Libya
Qatar (women under 30)Unmarried women require their father’s permission
but no restriction on married women
Saudi ArabiaSudan
Egypt (women under 21) SwazilandSyria (women under 18)United Arab Emirates
Yemen
Source: Country reports of US Department of State (2005).
PAPER WALLS ARE EASIER TO TEAR DOWN 2035
restrictions coupled with societal pressures re-duce the ability of women to migrate alonefrom such countries. For example, in Kuwait,where Egyptians and Syrians are among themajor Arab migrant groups, Shah (2004) re-ports that there were twice as many migrantmale Arabs as migrant females, and that only12% of female Arab migrants were in the laborforce, compared to 66% of Arab men. Most fe-males were not working and accompanyingfamily members. This contrasts strongly withfemale Asian migrants to the Gulf, who moreoften migrate alone as housemaids and forwhom 77% were working.
In Table 7, we examine whether the presenceof these restrictions on the freedom of womento emigrate is associated with a country havingfewer migrants per capita. 20 Since we were un-able to obtain passport costs for many of thecountries with restrictions, we do not look atthe joint impact of passport costs and restric-tions, but instead in Column 1 regress migrantsper capita on a dummy variable for whether thecountry restricts women from emigrating, percapita income, the log of population, and thegovernment effectiveness measure which was aprime determinant of passport costs. In Col-umn 2, we also check how sensitive the resultsare to adding a squared term in per capita in-come and population. The results show thatthese restrictions are associated with less migra-tion. Countries which restrict the rights of wo-men to migrate have 5–6% less migrants percapita than countries with similar income, pop-ulation, and governance levels which do nothave these restrictions.
Table 8 details countries where two otherforms of legal restrictions on movement are in
force. The first is a set of countries which re-quires citizens to obtain government permissionor an exit visa in order to be able to travel.While permission may be granted in most casesin some of these countries, the process ofrequiring this permission introduces additionalcosts and uncertainty into the migration deci-sion. A second type of legal restriction occursin several countries with compulsory national
Table 8. Other legal restrictions on emigration
Government permission oran exit visa requiredfor all citizens to travel
Source: Country reports of US Department of State(2005).
2036 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
service, which restrict the rights of travel of cit-izens of national service age who have not com-pleted their service requirements. Since the ageof national service closely corresponds to theage range at which individuals have the greatestpropensity to migrate in many countries, theserestrictions may prevent the young and mobilefrom being able to reap the rewards of migra-tion.
7. CONCLUSIONS
This paper documents for the first time theenormous variation in the cost of obtaining apassport across countries. One in every 10countries are found to have passport costswhich exceed 10% of annual per capita income.Passport costs are found to be higher in richercountries, and high relative to income in coun-tries with poor governance. The regulatoryquality and government effectiveness are thestrongest correlates, suggesting that costs arehigh due to inefficient government bureaucracyand over-regulation. There is less evidence tosupport high passport prices being used as away to extract rent from highly skilled high-in-come emigrants.
These high passport costs are strongly associ-ated with lower emigration rates. Loweringpassport costs relative to per capita income by1% point is associated with a 0.75% age pointincrease in emigrants per capita. The paper also
documents the existence of other barriers toexit, including time costs, and legal barrierssuch as restrictions on women getting passportsor leaving the country unaccompanied. Coun-tries which restrict the rights of women to emi-grate are found to have 5–6% less migrants percapita than countries with similar levels of in-come and governance which do not have theserestrictions.
As a result, this paper has shown that there ispolicy latitude on the part of many migrant-sending countries to enhance the ability of theircitizens to emigrate. Reduction of the cost of apassport, faster processing times, and the re-moval of any legal restrictions on emigrationoffer the potential for reaping additional gainsfrom migration. It seems likely that suchrestrictions are more likely to bind for pooremigrants than for richer emigrants, so thatremoving them will enhance the opportunitiesfor poorer individuals to migrate. While thereis considerable controversy regarding the over-all impact of skilled migration, due to braindrain concerns, there is more consensus thatan increase in unskilled migration is of benefitto sending countries, particularly when thelarge gains in income for the migrants them-selves are considered (see GCIM, 2005; WorldBank, 2005).
Although this paper shows that many coun-tries have the opportunity to increase migra-tion by lowering passport costs, doing so willrequire policymakers to act to reform theexisting system. While such a process can bedifficult if currently bureaucrats are enjoyingrents from the current system, many stand togain from such a reform. This paper can per-haps provide a first step in building the basefor such reforms by providing evidence as tothe costs of the existing policy, and by allow-ing greater transparency in comparing coststo other countries.
This paper also focuses attention on two ele-ments of the cost of migration. There has beenconsiderable attention devoted recently to thecosts of sending remittances and the potentialgains to be had from lowering these costs. 21
The formal costs of migrating have receivedmuch less attention, and there is considerablescope for further research which examines therole of formal migration costs in determiningmigration numbers and on the impact of policychanges in these dimensions.
PAPER WALLS ARE EASIER TO TEAR DOWN 2037
NOTES
1. See http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm.
2. Unless indicated otherwise, all prices given in thispaper are in terms of October 2005 USDs.
3. Obtained from www.oanda.com and www.xe.com.
4. In addition, the same type of passport varies slightlyin price across different districts in Belgium and theNetherlands due to small district level administrativefees charged. We use typical prices for these countries,provided by the Embassies.
5. One justification for not dividing the 10-year pass-port price in half is that potential migrants must pay thefull cost of the passport upfront.
6. 2003 GNI data were used for a few countrieswhereas 2004 GNI were not available.
7. Note that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, apassport has an official price of US$80, but the goingprice for an ordinary citizen is US$150 (Source: WorldBank resident mission).
8. We use data for 2004, since it is the latest availableand appears the most relevant year for looking at 2005passport costs. However, these governance measurestypically do not change a lot from year to year, sosimilar results would be obtained using the average over2000–04.
9. Principal components finds only one eigenvaluegreater than unity (5.28), suggesting that one dimensionis indeed sufficient to explain these different measures.
10. Recall that the governance variables are scaled sothat they have standard deviation one. Hence thecoefficient shows the impact of a one standard deviationchange in governance.
11. Of course one concern with including this control isthat it may be endogenous, if high passport prices deterskilled migration. However, we would expect skilledmigrants to be able to meet the costs of a passport muchmore easily than unskilled migrants, and so it is likelythat endogeneity is much less of a concern here than itwould be if we were to look at rent extraction from allmigrants, or from unskilled migrants.
12. Since this data is based on census records, it does areasonable job of capturing migration, even from very
poor countries. It is likely to undercount seasonal andillegal migrants to the extent that they are not capturedin censuses. However, many censuses still capture a largeshare of illegal migrants, so this database captures alarge share of all migration.
13. A practical reason for doing this is that census datadoes not allow separation of migrants into legal andillegal categories.
14. Of these countries, Nepal has a 2.2% migrant share,while the other countries have migrant shares under 1%(data on migrants unavailable for Ethiopia).
15. Many countries do not break down country oforigin beyond the top ten or so sending countries.
16. Migration flow data collected from the Office ofImmigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Secu-rity in the United States; Citizenship and ImmigrationCanada in Canada; the Department of Immigration andMulticultural and Indigenous Affairs in Australia; andthe New Zealand Immigration Service in New Zealand.
17. A large absolute number of migrants may alsoenable economies of scale in the production of passports,lowering the marginal cost of producing a passport interms of staffing time and office expenses.
18. Although we have shown that the level of highlyskilled migration is not associated with higher passportcosts, providing some evidence against this possibility.
19. I tried adding a dummy variable for allowingpassports to be mailed in to columns 1 and 2 of Table 5,for the 42 countries for which this data was available.This subset of countries had few African or Asiancountries, and the coefficient on the posting dummy wasnegative and insignificant. That is, for the mostlyEuropean and Latin American countries in the sample,countries which allow passports to be obtained by post,if anything, had insignificantly lower emigration rates.
20. Gender disaggregated migration data are notavailable at a sufficient level of detail to permit testingwhether these restrictions have a greater effect on femalemigration, as one would expect.
21. See Gibson, McKenzie, and Rohorua (2006) for acalculation of the gains from lowering remittancecosts.
Docquier, F., & Marfouk, A. (2005). Internationalmigration by educational attainment (1990–2000) –Release 1.1. In C. Ozden, & M. Schiff (Eds.).International migration, remittances and development.New York: McMillan and Palgrave.
Gibson, J., McKenzie, D. J., & Rohorua, H. (2006).How cost-elastic are remittances? Evidence fromTongan migrants in New Zealand. Pacific EconomicBulletin, 21(1), 112–128.
Global Commission on International Migration (2005).Migration in an interconnected world: new directionsfor action, Report of the Global Commission onInternational Migration. <www.gcim.org>.
Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A., & Mastruzzi, M. (2005).Governance matters IV: governance indicators for1996–2004. Mimeo. The World Bank.
Parsons, C. R, Skeldon, R., Walmsley, T. L., &Winters, L. A. (2005). Quantifying the internationalbilateral movements of migrants, Mimeo. The WorldBank and the Development Research Centre on
APPENDIX A. PASSPORT COS
Country Cost inUSD
Cost as %pcGNI
Country
Albania 46.46 2.23 Fiji
Angola 50.00 4.85 FinlandAntigua and
Barbuda
18.52 0.19 France
Argentina 25.20 0.70 Gambia, TheArmenia 0.00 0.00 Germany
Australia 115.22 0.43 GhanaAustria 83.33 0.26 Greece
Azerbaijan 23.83 2.50 GrenadaBahamas, The 29.85 0.20 Guatemala
Bahrain 31.83 0.26 GuyanaBangladesh 22.83 5.19 HondurasBarbados 62.66 0.68 Hong Kong, China
Migration, Globalisation and Poverty at SussexUniversity.
Philander, F. (2005). Shady deals revealed at homeaffairs. New Era October 10, 2005. <http://allafri-ca.com/stories/200510100439.html> Accessed 1.11.2005.
Shah, N. M. (2004). Arab migration patterns in the Gulf,in Arab Migration in a Globalized World (pp. 91–113). Geneva: International Organization for Migra-tion (IOM).
UNICEF (2005). The State of the World’s Children 2006.New York, NY: UNICEF.
US Department of State (2005). 2004 Country reports onhuman rights practices. Washington, DC: Bureau ofDemocracy, Human Rights and Labor, UnitedStates Department of State. <http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/index.htm> Accessed 1.11.2005.
World Bank (2005). Global economic prospects 2006:economic implications of remittances and migration.World Bank: Washington, DC.
TS AROUND THE WORLD
Cost inUSD
Cost as %pcGNI
Country Cost inUSD
Cost as %pcGNI
42.52 1.58 Norway 152.34 0.29
48.31 0.15 Oman 12.95 0.1672.46 0.24 Pakistan 25.11 4.19
