International migration: an alternative to the impacts of demographic changes in Brazil?

Abstract

Demographic transition brings innumerable transformations in age structure, one of them being population ageing. In Brazil, it is estimated that 22.6% of the population will be 65 years of age, and older, by 2050, in a similar scenario to that of developed countries. Given these changes, the limitations and potentials of migration are discussed as a possible way to address the situation. On the one hand, immigrants can become part of the active working-age population, constituting an important part of the future Brazilian workforce. On the other hand, it raises concern about the country absorbing foreigners, who will also age, thus increasing the weight of the older ages. In this context, the term "replacement migration" refers to the migratory process with demographic intent related to population size and structure. Therefore, in order to analyze the impact of the migratory component on Brazilian age structure up to the year 2050, demographic projections were prepared from scenarios based on the Demographic Component Method. The scenarios which aimed to decrease dependency ratio or were based on net migration rates of migrant recipient countries, such as Germany, were the ones which resulted in more reasonable migratory balances.

Key words Replacement migration; Population-ageing; Demographic transition