How many South Africans are planning to leave the country for good

Source: Biztech, 23/03/2019

This is the finding of a team of researchers from the Unicef
Office of Research and the Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency which looked at the extent that children’s
wellbeing is a potential driver of migration.
“The strength of this relationship may be a starting point for
additional analysis that recognises children’s wellbeing as a
migration driver and dives further into possible causal
relationships,” the researchers said.
“These findings also may have implications for policy and
programming. Policies that improve the quality of life for
children may act as pull factors, drawing people on the move to
family-friendly countries, and at the same time, interventions
that improve child welfare in a country of origin may discourage
people from moving away.”
South Africa
As part of the research, the policy paper looked at the various
push and pull factors which lead to people emigrating and how many
people actually make the jump.
Gallup’s World Poll â€` which surveyed more than 150 countries from
2o06 to 2016 â€` offered two variables to these measure intentions:
desire, and actual plans to migrate.
The former captures whether an individual would like to move
permanently to another country, while the latter identifies
whether an individual is planning to do it.
Using this metric the research shows that roughly 1.5% of South
Africans say they have actual plans to migrate while closer to 16%
say they would like to migrate.
The following figure illustrates the relationship between these
variables in different countries.
The scatter plots display the percentage of individuals with an
intent to migrate on the horizontal axis and the percentage of
individuals with migration plans on the vertical axis.

“Countries with a higher than average proportion of individuals
with migration intent also display a higher proportion of
individuals with migration plans,” the researchers said.
“This is true across all income regions. In addition, the
percentage of individuals who would like to move permanently to
another country decreases as the average income level in the
country increases.”
Change in data?
Because the above graph is an aggregate of a decade worth of
survey data (2006 â€` 2016), the findings are unlikely to differ
drastically from current statistics.
However anecdotal data shows that there has been a continual
increase in the number of skilled South Africans leaving the
country.
Speaking to the City Press, removals firm Elliott Mobility said it
facilitated 2,500 moves abroad in 2018 and that it expects this
number to increase by approximately 20%.
“People are emigrating for job and family prospects,” said the
company’s Moira Luyckx.
“There are also some who are relocated by local and global
corporations for their specific skills,” she said.
According to Elliott Mobility, clients are aged between 30 and 55,
and are 85% white, 5% African and 10% Indian.
Similarly, Stuttaford Van Lines pointed to a 15% increase in
families emigrating in 2018, many of whom are skilled workers who
transferred abroad within multinational companies.
The most popular destinations his clients emigrate to are the UK,
Australia and New Zealand with the US, Canada, Asia, the rest of
Africa and parts of the Middle East, also on the list.
www.sami.co.za