Governmental stability and emigration in Sub-Saharan Africa: the role of skills and gender

Abstract

PurposeUsing data for a set of 32 Sub-Saharan countries over the years 2000, 2005 and 2010, the paper investigates the effects of domestic governmental stability upon emigration and assesses whether education and gender shape the relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts instrumental variable (IV) Poisson regressions and two-stage least squares (2SLS) as robustness tests.FindingsThe paper suggests that increased governmental stability has a larger impact on the emigration of high-skilled individuals. Nevertheless, once emigrants are partitioned according to both education and gender, the authors find evidence of a larger impact of stability on the emigration of highly educated females.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical findings may lack generalizability because of the chosen research approach. Then, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications that can be drawn for both the growth and the development of Sub-Saharan Africa.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills an identified need to study how both education and gender shape the relationship between domestic governmental stability and emigration.