Written by: Christian Dustmann, Tommaso Frattini and Anna Rosso

Over the decade following the late 1990s, Poland experienced a dramatic increase in emigration. Whereas in 1998 the share of emigrants from the overall population was about 0.50%, it had increased to 2.3% only a decade later. There was large regional variation in emigration rates, with the share of emigrants in 2007 ranging between 1% and 5.6% across Poland´s 16 provinces. Over the period, emigrants also became increasingly younger and better educated compared to non-emigrants.

These large increases in emigration are likely to have had an impact on the Polish labour market and, in particular, on the wages of those who stayed behind. It is this question that the researchers address in this study, which investigates the wage impact of emigration over a period of 10 years (1998-2007), during which time emigration from Poland was at its highest.