Public Goods, Amenities, and Migration Choices: Evidence from Italians Living Abroad
To what extent do public goods and amenities, rather than just income differentials, drive migration decisions? We address this question by analyzing the destination choices of 398,836 working-age Italian-born household heads (drawn from a near-universe registry of 1.81 million Italians abroad) across 36 countries on five continents between 2005–2024, in a discrete choice framework. Our analysis draws on unique registry data that records the near-universe of Italian citizens establishing residence in a foreign country, providing individual-level detail unavailable in survey or aggregate flow data. By controlling for individual-specific predicted earnings and network effects, we address typical identification challenges and isolate the amenity channel. We find that destination country characteristics are a meaningful determinant of location choice, alongside income and networks. Using willingness-to-pay analysis, we quantify these valuations: emigrants would sacrifice around 0.8% of income for a one standard deviation improvement in educational quality at destination, and 1.2% for better environmental amenities. They would require around 0.4% more income to accept a one standard deviation increase in homicide rates, and 0.8% for higher pollution. These findings suggest that beyond income, destination amenities, and in particular the classic public goods of education, safety, environmental quality, and institutions, act as a relevant factor in the migration decision, offering policymakers a complementary lever to mitigate brain drain.
