Scholars have long debated the relationship between foreign aid and international migration, with some arguing that foreign aid can deter emigrants and others contending that aid enables them. We contribute to this discussion by exploring whether negative aid shocks affect migration patterns. We theorize that these shocks, which occur when there are large and abrupt decreases in aid disbursement to a given country, lead individuals in aid-recipient countries to emigrate. Such shocks lead to reductions in the provision of public and community services that are funded by aid. These reductions in turn force individuals who depend on these services to seek better lives abroad. We expect this effect to be especially evident among low-skilled individuals, who are most reliant on the services that are supported by foreign aid. We use country-level panel data to test hypotheses derived from these arguments and we find, first, that negative aid shocks are accompanied by heightened emigration rates and, second, that this effect is driven by the emigration of relatively unskilled individuals.

长期以来，学者们一直在争论外援与国际移民之间的关系，有些人争辩说，外援可以阻止移民，而另一些人则争辩说，援助使移民得以实现。我们通过探讨负面援助冲击是否影响移民模式来为这一讨论做出贡献。我们认为，当给定国家的援助支出大幅度突然下降时，就会发生这些冲击，从而导致受援国中的个人移居国外。这种冲击导致减少了由援助资助的公共和社区服务的提供。这些减少反过来迫使依靠这些服务的个人在国外寻求更好的生活。我们希望这种影响在最依赖外国援助支持的服务的低技能个人中尤为明显。