Governmental stability and emigration in Sub-Saharan Africa: the role of skills and gender

Purpose – Using data for a set of 32 Sub-Saharan countries over the years 2000, 2005 and 2010, the paper investigates the effects of domestic governmental stability upon emigration and assesses whether education and gender shape the relationship. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts instrumental variable (IV) Poisson regressions and two-stage least squares (2SLS) as robustness tests. Findings – The paper suggests that increased governmental stability has a larger impact on the emigration of high-skilled individuals. Nevertheless, once emigrants are partitioned according to both education and gender, the authors find evidence of a larger impact of stability on the emigration of highly educated females. Research limitations/implications – The empirical findings may lack generalizability because of the chosen research approach. Then, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. Practical implications – The paper includes implications that can be drawn for both the growth and the development of Sub-Saharan Africa. Originality/value – This paper fulfills an identified need to study how both education and gender shape the relationship between domestic governmental stability and emigration.