Skilled migration to the United States: a multivariate analysis of the period 1980-2010

This paper aims to present the trends registered for skilled migration to the US for the period 1980-2010 and assess the driving forces of its evolution assessing the effects of the changes that took place in the origin countries.
First, we describe the magnitude of the flow and the intensity through the analysis of skilled migration rates. Skilled migrants are identified through the analysis of the stock of foreigners enumerated in the US in the American census data of the waves carried out between 1980 and 2000, complementing this information with the American Community Survey 2010.
Second, we assess the determinants of the skilled emigration to the US through a multivariate analysis, accounting for the economic, political and social factors that explain this outflow from the perspective of the countries of origin (push). In this last case the focus is driven to assess the changes observed in migration intensity along the last thirty years from a multivariate longitudinal approach.
Descriptive and multivariate analyses are performed to explain the changes in skilled migration outflows to the US in the period of analysis. We attempt to explore the question of the determinants of skilled migration by modeling five-year accumulated flow of skilled migrants from origin countries to the US between 1980 and 2010