Beware the trap of ‘Energy access will stop migration’

It’s wrong. And it won’t work.

A false argument seems to be gaining traction: We should connect poor people to electricity because it will reduce their incentive to move to rich countries.

I understand the impulse. The need for energy is staggering. At least 3 billion people live without enough reliable electricity and about 750 million live without any at all. With the international aid system crumbling and populist movements on the rise globally, it’s tempting to grasp at reasons – any reasons – why politicians should keep investing in energy for the poor.

The compelling arguments for massive energy investments include creating jobs, boosting economic growth, spreading new technology, and trying to provide some credible alternative to Chinese infrastructure. Even in the Trump era, they provide plenty of justification to get our act together and invest aggressively in mutually beneficial projects.

Yet now the energy-to-stop migration argument is on the rise. For example, in a Bloomberg interview touting a new initiative to connect 300 million Africans to power by 2030,

[World Bank president] Banga said he doesn’t see the program being threatened by changes imposed by the Trump administration, including the temporary freezing of foreign-aid programs and a more inward-looking policy…. “I hope not,” he said, when asked if support for the program might ebb under the new US leadership. “It reduces illegal migration. If it keeps people happy in their countries…

Energy-to-stop-migration has also become a talking point for the Italian PM, gas company executives, and some development think tanks. Even the Biden admin included clean energy as a pillar of its aid plan for Central America to tackle “root causes” of migration.

My plea to anyone who may find this approach attractive: Please don’t. Energy as a means to keep people at home is wrong in at least three ways.

❌ Empirically wrong: Growth actually does not prevent migration.

The logic seems to be: If lack of energy is stemming job creation, then more energy and the development benefits it brings will “keep people happy” and reduce the pressure to cross borders.

The first premise has lots of evidence: yes, power outages kill jobs and, yes, all countries need abundant energy to grow richer.

But the second premise does not. My friend the brilliant economist Michael Clemens is probably the world’s leading expert on the relationship between development and migration. He concludes, based on lots and lots of empirical evidence (rather than armchair conjecture), that the opposite may even be true: for poor countries, growing incomes raise the chances of migration, not lessen it. (This starts to reverse at around $12,000 per capita.)

Think of it this way: Moving from one country to another requires a lot of upfront high-risk investment. You need money to travel, some buffer savings to get started, and some connections to move and find a job. If you are extremely poor, you can’t possibly afford any of this. But once you have more income, you can invest some of that in moving to earn even higher wages in a higher productivity economy.

Research from ODI similarly concluded:

The problem in migration policymaking – which often relies on intuition and guesswork, rather than evidence – is a scatter-gun approach which lists a whole range of issues as root causes…. Policymakers assume that addressing all of these issues will reduce people’s desire to migrate. But often, these assumptions do not hold. Through our research, we have found that reducing poverty and raising educational levels might actually increase desires to migrate, because it gives people the means to do so and broadens their horizons.

So, sorry, it’s not true. Energy-driven growth will not stem migration.

❌ Ethically wrong: Let’s not pull up the ladder that helped us and our families.

The benefits to human welfare of cross-border movement are mind-bogglingly huge. Clemens calls it the trillion dollar bill just sitting on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up. The benefits accrue not just to the individuals who move, but also to both sending and receiving countries as a whole. The inverse of this evidence is that trapping people in place is keeping everyone much poorer. So trying to prevent migration may sound good politically but it’s dumb economics.

It’s even dicier ethics. The greatest single event in my family’s history was my great grandparents moving from poor Russia to rich America. Some version of that story is true for probably 97% of today’s American citizens.

I fully understand that in the current political environment, this mountain of evidence and the related ethical arguments are not going to beat scapegoating and fear-mongering. I get that. I would not expect besieged development leaders to try to take this on right now. Talking about immigration is hard. But those making the energy-to-stop-migration argument know – or should know – that labor mobility is hugely positive. They don’t need to pander to populism with false claims.

❌ Tactically wrong: It won’t work.

Of course advocates for fighting energy poverty should always try to find ways to meet people where they are. We should frame problem solving in ways that align with their priors. But does anyone honestly believe that Trump officials will suddenly realize that, aha, they should invest in energy in poor countries so poor people stop trying to hop the border fence? Grasping at straws like this is doomed to fail.

The White House is far more likely to support overseas energy investments when they create American jobs, spread US technology, and counter China’s influence. Those are the far more promising tactical lanes – and they have the added benefit of being true.

✅ Make the case for energy abundance everywhere on the merits.

We have plenty of real reasons to justify more energy investments around the world. The economic and geostrategic self-interests are so strong they stand on their own. Most of all, the benefits of energy enable human freedom.

If the World Bank or other advocates want to appeal to the Trump administration, they need look no further than Trump’s own Secretary of Energy Chris Wright:

To me it’s just blatantly obvious that the world needs more energy, much more energy… the only goal of energy is to expand human opportunity, to make us live longer, healthier, more opportunities for us and our kids… it is foundational.

The migration justification is a trap. Let’s not fall into it.