Study finds immigration boosted growth in wealthy countries

A 1% increase in immigrants equal to a country’s population is associated with a 1.2% rise in GDP per worker within five years and a 1.9% rise over 10 years. Immigration has moved to the center of politics in the United States, Germany and Britain, where anti-immigration parties have turned it into a central campaign line.

The research, titled The immigration impact on population, labor productivity, investments and TFP in OECD countries, is scheduled for a July 1 session at the ECB Forum on Central Banking 2026, which runs June 29 to July 1 in Sintra, Portugal. The session, “Migration: implications for productivity and growth in Europe,” is to be chaired by ECB Vice-President Boris Vujčić, with Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis, and co-authors Gaetano Basso of Banca d’Italia and Mitali R. Mathur of UC Davis.

Peri’s paper covers dozens of wealthy countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The gains came not just from more workers. A significant share of the rise in GDP per worker came through stronger investment, and labor productivity rose during and after periods of higher immigration. Most migrants were highly skilled.

The number of immigrants arriving in OECD countries from outside the bloc rose to about 100 million in 2024 from about 25 million in 1990. In Spain, the immigrant share of the adult population climbed by 15 percentage points from 1990 to 2024, corresponding to 28% higher growth in GDP per worker. In Britain, the immigrant share of the total population rose by 10 percentage points, implying about 19% of GDP per person growth out of a 60% increase. As much as one third of GDP-per-worker growth in Spain, Italy or Britain between 1990 and 2024 may have come from immigration.

An ECB blog post put foreign workers at half of euro-area labor-force growth over the past three years even though they represented about 9% of the total labor force in 2022. The euro area’s working-age population has been shrinking because of lower fertility rates.