Migration from New-Accession Countries and Duration Expectancy in the EU-15: 2002–2008

European Union (EU) enlargements in 2004 and 2007 were accompanied by increased migration from new-accession to established-member (EU-15) countries. The impacts of these flows depend, in part, on the amount of time that persons from the former countries live in the latter over the life course. In this paper, we develop period estimates of duration expectancy in EU-15 countries among persons from new-accession countries. Using a newly developed set of harmonized Bayesian estimates of migration flows each year from 2002 to 2008 from the Integrated Modelling of European Migration Project, we exploit period age patterns of country-to-country migration and mortality to summarize the average number of years that persons from new-accession countries could be expected to live in EU-15 countries over the life course. In general, the results show that the amount of time that persons from new-accession countries could be expected to live in the EU-15 nearly doubled after 2004.