Educational attainment of recent immigrants Percentage of foreign-born labor force and of the native-born labor force aged 25-34 and 25-64 with a tertiary qualification (2005) Source: OECD In many emigration countries, emigrants tend to be of higher educational attainment than the general population. This is because emigration involves certain costs, which are more easily borne by persons with higher education and presumably higher incomes, and because highly educated persons are more “tuned in” to opportunities abroad. Whether or not emigrants are more highly educated than the native-born populations of the countries they are moving to, however, depends in part on the history of immigration in these countries, the needs of their labor markets and the returns to different levels of education in destination countries relative to those in the countries of origin. Recent arrivals to OECD countries who are in the labor force are in some countries more and in
