The impact of immigration on economic development. A case study of the Republic of Mari-El of the Russian Federation and Latvia

Mihails Kozlovs

University of Latvia, Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences

Jelena Kostromina

Volga Technical University of the Russian Federation

DOI: 10.22364/fg.15.22

Keywords: immigration, HDI, IA-HDI, correlation analysis, Latvia, Republic of Mari-El

Abstract

In this paper, the influence of immigration on the economies of Latvia and the Republic of Mari-El in the Russian Federation is examined. In each of the researched regions, various positive immigration source-countries were identified, and ranged by inequality-adjusted human development index. Then, the correlation between immigration and integral economic development index was studied in both cases. The correlation was found to be positive, and significant enough in order to be taken into account. In the case of Latvia, it is important to foster immigration flow from existing immigrantsource countries, especially Germany, Israel and Russia. These countries demonstrate better results in the IA-HDI index, and that is why the probability of having a positive effect to the economy is higher than from any other region. In the case of Republic of Mari-El, 10 attractive immigration source-countries were identified. Taking into consideration immigration trends in Russian regions, it can be observed that a comparatively significant amount of immigrants are coming from CIS countries. Immigration from countries with very high IA-HDI indexes is insignificant.